Full text of "Crossroads of continents : cultures of Siberia and Alaska"

See other formats

co \ ± to — CO ± co \ z — co

! A R I E S SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI NVINOSH1IWS S3iavaai3 LIBRARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOIlfU

^ ^ ^ ^-^sb 2 ^ ^ _ z to

1/5 2 .V,- <0 2: _ to H ..«• . CO

2
o
o I to

- • " "" — - - ■■ ■ — | " o

_ _ 2 WJ

> ' ‘Wr 5 2 v > ''sjOiiiSjlX 2 ^ > -ffi

CO ~ 2 CO 2 CO » 2 - m *■ 2

fUUSNI_NVINOSHlltMS ^S3iaVaan_LIBRAR I E S ^SMITHSON IAN _ INSTITUTION NOIinillSNI_NVINOSHJLIWS S3iava8l3_LIBRA

v I , * .« \ w *Jpjis ^ ^

Jj < (*(£ 3b) 2 1# 3b) OOL..W ? 3b) < (fft i§) 2 <

W I Ny | | | 1 g g ^

RAR I ES^ SMITHSONIAN^ INSTITUTION “ NOlinillSNI “NVINOSHIIINS S3 I a Va a 11 LIBRARI ES^ SMITHSONIAN^ INSTITUTION Z NOIlfU

i - § /#% I /#% I #4 S /#% 1

901 ■’'* \ *v£sV-M. Qib “Hlo >» d®. /T/< T> dB^ «4dl — ’ of

hiisni nvinoshiiins saiavaan libraries Smithsonian institution NouniiiSNi nvinoshiiws saiavaan libra

2 CO 2 , to _ 2 * CO 2 CO 2

■t — d~ v *«r-

to Vil* CO to co

x vx 'Ills?- O >#o x o

S XfoosnJ-X > ' 2 '" ^ > '' 2 X'ftosv<£?,/ > ' 5

CO 2 to 2 ^ ••*•-■ 2 CO 2 co

ARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOIinillSNI_ NVIN0SH1IWS S3IHVHail LIBRARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlifll

CO ~ CO _ -7 \ CO _ X CO ~ CO

<C I S' &» -ai “ I “ I Id t®' 3> I yg>VC'>- “1 I — ££*■ ->rti > I «-r

CC ce 0;- ' 5 a:

o X^OS^2 _ \jvasvvx O - VJf1' ^ Q CQ ■ V>,. ■•'•tv m ^r

2 -J 2 _j 2

musNi nvinoshiiws S3iavaan libraries Smithsonian institution Notiniiism nvinoshiiws ssiavaan libra

0 = 2 ,x ro

m ^ocy r; m ^ ^

_ co = CO £ CO

IARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI NVIN0SH1IWS S3IBVaan LIBRARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlim

..-.to 2 w to 2 _ CO 2 CO 2 V- to

2 >

" CO * 2 CO 2 CO * 2 CO 2

musNi nvinoshiiws siiavaan libraries Smithsonian institution NouniiiSNi nvinoshii^s sb i ava a n_ li b ra

^ co X co X CO — co _ 2 _

^ w ^ ^ W W

RAR I ESZ SMITHSONIAN”* INSTITUTION^ NOlinillSNI^NVINOSHUlNS^SB I a Va a ll^LI B R AR I E S^ SMITHSONIAN”" INSTITUTION ^ NOlim

“ — > 2 1- 2 □ _ 2

O O XflyzioX „ V 0 xSvciriX _ /TTX 0 . ™ /TA<l5oX O /<

vos ^

X. > Ip |

m x^vosv^x x^vasv^ rn V^' X xzh-as>^2 m '<jjiov/vy X rn X^vos*^

_ CO X CO X co _ to

musNi NviNOSHiiws SBiavaan libraries Smithsonian institution NouniiiSNi nvinoshiiins saiavaan libra

CO 2. CO 7 CO 2 ■“ ~

IARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI NVINOSHIIWS SBiavaail LIBRARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlim

CO ~ CO V CO X CO X to

o N^Vos^iX \HsvsvjX O vp _ Q

2 _J 2 ' _| 2 _

nillSNI NVIN0SH1IINS S3iavaail LIBRARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI NVINOSHIIWS SBiavaaiT LIBRA

y y .VCD

'/>/ XJ

o <^E

i ■ ' " -r m LL i « i -r i 1 1 \nmvy m

CO ± CO \ ± CO ± CO £ CO

NViNOSHims ssiavaan libraries Smithsonian institution NouruusNi nvinoshiiins S3iavaan libraries sn

Z ... CO Z

£ X

> Wii/ 2 ^ 2 ^ 5

5 Z CO » Z CO^ Z CO Z CO ' Z

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI NViNOSHims SBIHVBaH LIBRARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI N\

■) ^ _ CO _ X CO _ CO _ CO

o " X NC'iiiv>- Q X»^, pc/ — o

nvinoshhims saiavaan^LiBRARi esXmithsonian^institution^ NouniiiSNi^NViNOSHims sa i a v a a 1 1 l i brar i es^si

>2 I- Z r- z _ !I > z r- Z

° nr, zr^£?oX 2 m 2 rn ^ m °

» /X .

> hi*

TO \?

rn ^ m ^ m m 1

) x CO x co £ CO — co X

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlifUllSNI NVINOSHIIWS S3iavaail LIBRARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI N

CO Z CO Z s co Z CO z

< /vftx s < V 2 <

x ZMZ'Wi O /X£v ■ 'm *\ X ° x o

co MW' MM co -4$) co MM co v co co

o MV -^9;, x VsCr -3?*/ O #5/ ^/. x ' x o ftV-llVVo/ x

z , '"Mm' t v^A»/ / t t

> ' 5 x^vosv^z >' 2 'vP > ^ - \xv >

— * ,/-v ~7 m -''v T7*

NViNOSHims ssiavaan libraries Smithsonian institution NouniiiSNi NViNOSHims S3iavaan libraries sr

w mV c

o
z

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI NVINOSHIIWS S3iavaai3 LIBRARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI N>

- - z r- z r- _ z

fcftl ' ’ f%\'\ 70 /-£\" ' '"A'C-X -1 / • >i X to !*£%' 'Oi\ C

m ^ co m y^Tpcjy '/MM/ rn

co £ co*-. £ co — co x CO

NViNOSHims S3iavaan libraries Smithsonian institution NouniiiSNi NViNOSHims ssiavaan libraries sr

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI NViNOSHims S3iavaai1 LIBRARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI

O _ XQijus^X o vc “ nvqjus^z q XQy oc^y “ O O

JNViNOSHims ssiavaan li b rar i esXmithsonian^institution ^NoiiniiiSNi^NviNOSHims saiavaan libraries s

z i— z r~ z <— \. z _ i— z

□

n v >££>' -3- x^jvas^z m x^vosv^iz x: m x; yw^z m - x m

o — co x co x co — co

SMITHSONIAN _INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI _NVINOSHimS S3iavaail_LIBRARI E S ^SMITHSONIAN _l NSTITUT ION NOlinillSN I N

> 5 XQVos>viZ > S

CO •* Z CO Z co z CO • Z CO

NViNOSHims saiavaan libraries Smithsonian institution NouniiiSNi NViNOSHims saiavaan libraries si

= - m — co X co _ 5 \ 01 „ - ^ X co

\7\

1 \ J

O “ O

— * Z - _j Z -

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI NViNOSHims S3iaVa3IT LIBRARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI N’

,.sz p i .Jb. I S x. • ” ° ^

Crossroad^

of Continent1}

fSflilf

iian Institution Press

fton, D.C. London

IllilP#

»&ygs*

* '-■■ ■■■-■.■ .

$0m

shshs£v *?

mm I

0k W:

Special thanks are due to the I. E. Repin Institute of
Painting, Sculpture, and Art, USSR Academy of Sciences,
Leningrad, and Aurora Press for photography and use of
Mikhail Tikhanov illustrations.

Previous pages: "Aleut Hunting" (Mikhail Tikhanov, 1817,
RIPSA 2126

Cover Illustration: Tasseled Shaman's Hat, Yukaghir
culture, Siberia. Collected by Cottle. Accessioned by
American Museum of Natural History in 1907. AMNH 70-
387 (fig. 333). Ceremonial Dance Mask, Koniag Eskimo.
Kodiak Island, Alaska. Collected by I. G. Voznesenskii in
the 1840s. Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography,
MAE 571-12 (fig. 368).

Photograph by Dane A. Penland.

Jeanne M. Sexton, editor

Alex and Caroline Castro, art direction and book design

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Crossroads of continents.

"Crossroads of continents is also the title of an exhibition organized
by the National Museum of Natural History and circulated by the
Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES)"

Bibliography: p.

1. Ethnology — Siberia (R.S.F.S.R.) — Exhibitions. 2. Indians of North
America — Alaska — Exhibitions. 3. Eskimos — Alaska — Exhibi¬
tions. 4. Siberia (R.S.F.S.R.) — Social Life and customs — Exhibi¬
tions. 5. Alaska — Social life and customs — Exhibitions.

I. Fitzhugh, William W., 1943— II. Crowell. Aron,

1952— III. National Museum of Natural History (U.S.)

GN635.S5C75 1988 306'. 0957 88-42630

ISBN 0-87474-442-3 (alk. paper)

ISBN 0-87474-435-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and
durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book
Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

INSTITUTIONAL ABBREVIATIONS
(Captions and Checklist)

AMHA Anchorage Museum of History and Art (Anchorage)
AMNH American Museum of Natural History (New York)

BCPM British Columbia Provincial Museum (Victoria, B.C.)

CMC Canadian Museum of Civilization (Ottawa)

FM Field Museum of Natural History (Chicago)

GNHL Grove National Historic Landmark (Chicago)

MAE Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Leningrad)
MIHPP Museum of History and Culture of the Peoples of Siberia
and the Far East, USSR Academy of Sciences (Novosibirsk)
NMAH National Museum of American History (Washington, D C.)
NMNH National Museum of Natural History (Washington, D.C.)
NPG National Portrait Gallery (Washington, D C.)

PMH Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard
University (Cambridge, Massachusetts)

PMS Peabody Museum (Salem. Massachusetts)

RIPSA I. E. Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture
(Leningrad)

SA Smithsonian Archives (Washington, D.C.)

SI-NAA National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
(Washington, D.C.)

SKRM Sakhalin Regional Museum (Iuzhno-Sakhalinsk, USSR)
SRM State Russian Museum (Leningrad)

UAFM University of Alaska Museum (Fairbanks)

UBCMA University of British Columbia, Museum of Anthropology
(Vancouver)

UMA University Museum of Anthropology (Philadelphia)

UWL University of Washington Libraries (Seattle)

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

The transliteration of Russian cyrillic script is not entirely consistent.
The Library of Congress transliteration, in its simplified form (without
diacritics), has been used in the references, and in the text for most
Russian and Soviet proper names, geographical locations on the
Soviet territory, as well as for technical terms from languages of
Soviet nationalities — except when commonly transliterated otherwise
in English.

Set in Egyptian Light by Monotype Composition Company, Inc., Baltimore, Maryland
Printed and bound by Areata Graphics, Kingsport. Tennessee
on 80 lb. Mountie Matte by Northwest Paper
Edited by Jeanne M. Sexton
Designed by Castro/Hollowpress

Published by the Smithsonian Institution Press
September 1988

Contents

Statement by the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution 6

Robert McC. Adams

Statement by the Director of the Institute of Ethnography,

USSR Academy of Sciences 7

Iu. V. Bromlei

INTRODUCTION

Crossroads of Continents: Beringian Oecumene 9

William W. Fitzhugh and Aron Crowell
Ethnic Connections Across Bering Strait 17

I. S. Gurvich

PEOPLES OF SIBERIA AND ALASKA

Peoples of the Amur and Maritime Regions 24

Lydia T. Black

Koryak and Itelmen: Dwellers of the Smoking Coast 31

S. A. Arutiunov

Even: Reindeer Herders of Eastern Siberia 35

S. A. Arutiunov

Chukchi: Warriors and Traders of Chukotka 39

S. A. Arutiunov

Eskimos: Hunters of the Frozen Coasts 42

William W. Fitzhugh

Aleut: Islanders of the North Pacific 52

Lydia T. Black and R. G. Liapunova
Tlingit: People of the Wolf and Raven 58

Frederica de Laguna

Northern Athapaskans: People of the Deer 64

James W. VanStone

STRANGERS ARRIVE

The Story of Russian America 70

Lydia T. Black

Treasures by the Neva: The Russian Collections 83

G. I. Dzeniskevich and L. P. Pavlinskaia
Baird's Naturalists: Smithsonian Collectors in Alaska 89

William W. Fitzhugh

The American Museum's Jesup North Pacific Expedition 97

Stanley A. Freed. Ruth S. Freed, and Laila Williamson
Young Laufer on the Amur 104

Laurel Kendall

CROSSCURRENTS OF TIME

Beringia: An Ice Age View 106

Steven B. Young

Ancient Peoples of the North Pacific Rim 111

Christy G. Turner II

Prehistory of Siberia and the Bering Sea 117

S. A. Arutiunov and William W. Fitzhugh
Prehistory of Alaska's Pacific Coast 130

Aron Crowell

THEMATIC VIEWS

Raven's Creatures 142

Milton M. R. Freeman

Many Tongues — Ancient Tales 145

Michael E. Krauss

Maritime Economies of the North Pacific Rim 151

Jean-Loup Rousselot, William W. Fitzhugh, and Aron
Crowell

Hunters, Herders, Trappers, and Fishermen 173

James W. VanStone

Economic Patterns in Northeastern Siberia 183

I. I. Krupnik

Economic Patterns in Alaska 191

William W. Fitzhugh

Dwellings, Settlements, and Domestic Life 194

Aron Crowell

Needles and Animals: Women's Magic 209

Valerie Chaussonnet

War and Trade 227

Ernest S. Burch, Jr.

Guardians and Spirit-Masters of Siberia 241

S. Ia. Serov

Eye of the Dance: Spiritual Life of the Bering Sea Eskimo 256
Ann Fienup-Riordan

Potlatch Ceremonialism on the Northwest Coast 271

Frederica de Laguna

Art and Culture Change at the Tlingit-Eskimo Border 281

Bill Holm

Comparative Art of the North Pacific Rim 294

William W. Fitzhugh

NEW LIVES FOR ANCIENT PEOPLES

Siberian Peoples: A Soviet View 314

V. V. Lebedev

Alaska Natives Today 319

Rosita Worl

Alaska Native Arts in the Twentieth Century 326

Margaret B. Blackman and Edwin S. Hall, Jr.

Appendix I Beads and Bead Trade in the

North Pacific Region 341

Peter Francis, Jr.

Appendix II List of Illustrations 342

Appendix III Exhibition Checklist 344

Notes 353

References 354

Credits 359

Acknowledgments 360

Statement by the Secretary
of the Smithsonian Institution

Robert McC. Adams

The opening of the Crossroads exhibition gives
cause for reflection on the history of Russian/
Soviet and American research and on the pros¬
pects for future collaboration in the decades and
centuries ahead. As we embark on this explo¬
ration of our common ancestry — not only of New
World peoples but of the shared histories of our
North Pacific Native peoples over thousands of
years — certain facts are inescapable.

The Smithsonian, like the Museum of Anthro¬
pology and Ethnography in Leningrad and the
American Museum of Natural History in New
York, has a long history of North Pacific research.
Pioneering efforts begun by the Smithsonian's
Spencer F. Baird, who began probing the rela¬
tionships of animals, plants, and humans be¬
tween North America and Asia in the early
1850s, initiated a research tradition that con¬
tributed to the purchase of Alaska from Russia
in 1867 and to the United States's first concerted
national research program — the documentation
of Alaska's resources and peoples, a project that
served both scientific and administrative needs
into the 20th century. The collections obtained
and the publications issued during that period
still constitute the basic reference data for much
modern biological and anthropological research
in this region. These resources, be they biological
type specimens, extinct elephant teeth, arche¬
ological specimens, or fragments of native oral
traditions, need to be protected in the same way
we should protect marine mammals, native cul¬
tures, and natural environments that fall in the
path of northern industrial development today.
This exhibition and the synthesis it achieves
would not have been possible without the con¬
certed efforts of research institutions to collect,
analyze, preserve, and disseminate knowledge
about arctic regions where the national interests
of the Soviet Union and the United States, to
note only the major contenders, have overlapped
since the early 19th century.

As the world collectively turns away from the
more highly developed portions of the Earth and
toward the less well developed regions — such
as those of the North Pacific Rim, the Arctic,
and the Antarctic — we find the world a smaller
place than it used to be. The days of Iuri
Lisianskii's multiyear voyage of discovery from
St. Petersburg to Alaska in 1803—06 are over.
Remoteness no longer is a cause for neglect of
distant regions today. It is in this spirit that the
United States has recently passed an Arctic
Research Policy Act (*) that promotes northern

research and international cooperation. Northern
nations, like traditional native cultures, have
worked out different solutions to problems of
northern environments. History suggests that
comparative studies of historical and contem¬
porary issues would be both interesting and
beneficial to mankind.

Crossroads of Continents testifies to the im¬
portance of geographically convergent themes.
Many of the basic problems concerning the
origins of man in the New World remain un¬
solved, together with the history of cultural
relationships across Bering Strait over thousands
of years. None of these problems can be settled
without an active, collective discourse among
scholars across Bering Strait. That these efforts
may take time should not be of concern, given
that we are only now brushing off the dust from
the Jesup Expedition notes of 1897-1903.

The results of this joint research and exhibition
point the way toward greater future collabora¬
tion and better understandings on the history
and future economic potential of the North Pacific
region, the Soviet Union, Canada, and the United
States. As we enter a new age of Pacific and
Arctic enterprises, and a greater awareness of
native cultures and northern peoples, we look
forward to closer contacts with our Soviet col¬
leagues and to future joint research and edu¬
cational programs.

Knud Rasmussen, the famous Danish arctic
explorer, charted the needs of arctic research
at the end of his long career in a talk to the
Pacific Science Congress in 1933, calling for a
multinational archeological program in North¬
eastern Siberia and Alaska: "I am quite aware
that a task like this cannot be brought to reali¬
zation in the twinkling of an eye. ... It is,
however, my firm conviction that one day there
will be a great co-operative undertaking of this
kind, and that this plan will be carried out at
that time.'' Although a motion to this effect was
passed by the Congress, the proposal lan¬
guished, a victim of Rasmussen's death and
political upheavals. The problems are as fresh
now as they were 55 years ago. Today the signs
are hopeful, and the need is great. Perhaps
Crossroads of Continents and the "glasnost” era
will bring Rasmussen's dream to life.

(*) United States Arctic Research Plan. Interagency
Arctic Research Policy Committee, July 1987. (Divi¬
sion of Polar Programs, National Science Foundation,
Washington, D.C. 20550)

Statement by the Director of the Institute of Ethnography
USSR Academy of Sciences

lu. V. Bromlei

Scholars have not reached agreement yet about
the question of when and where precisely the
first human foot stepped into the New World.
But practically all agree that the migration from
Asia through the area covered by the exhibition
Crossroads of Continents played an extremely
important role in the peopling of America. Al¬
though we know — and must acknowledge we
know — very little about these first steps on the
crossroads of the two major continents, this fact
alone makes it fascinating for a contemporary
audience to experience visually the traditional
aboriginal cultures that developed and lived in
these lands on each side of the North Pacific
Ocean. Comparison of these cultures, which
developed in immense territories sharing com¬
parable natural and climatic conditions on the
neighboring continents of Asia and America, is
also a subject of enduring interest.

It is as though history had made in the
Beringian region an experiment of testing cul¬
tural variations and similarities. The contacts
between the two mainlands across the Bering
Strait were very intense in ancient times; later
they were reduced almost exclusively to contacts
between Asiatic and American Eskimo, simul¬
taneously with the emergence of a highly de¬
veloped and very specific culture of maritime
Eskimo sea hunters. But even during the periods
of minimal cross-continental contact, the uni¬
versal historical laws favored the formation of
similar economic and cultural types and com¬
parable cultural forms on both sides of the Pacific
Ocean. There were, however, differences, and
these are significant as well. The most striking
example was the evolution from subsistence
economy in Chukotka, with its deep roots in
Eurasia, into a more complex economy involving
large-scale reindeer herding, whereas in Alaska
and Canada nothing similar happened.

The material displayed in this exhibition
demonstrates once again that the origins and
the process of formation of the peoples of North
America cannot be completely understood with¬
out corresponding information of the peoples
and cultures of Northeastern Siberia, and vice
versa. The importance given by the Soviet re¬
gime since its presence in the Soviet North to
the study of the traditional cultures and the ways
of life of the Small Peoples of the North; the
growing interest shown in the United States and
Canada in the study and support of traditional
aboriginal cultures; and, now, the generally

promising opportunities opening in Soviet-
American scientific cooperation — all of these
conditions urge us to devote our energy toward
the development of further coordination of re¬
search in ethnology, anthropology, and archeol¬
ogy of the peoples of the northern parts of the
Old and the New Worlds.

Another important circumstance of this exhi¬
bition should be noted here. Historically the
peoples of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands were
first studied by Russian scientists. In the 18th
and early 19th centuries, they gathered unique
collections of artifacts, made drawings, sketches,
and paintings, and compiled written data that
Canadians and Americans did not have access
to. On the other hand, Northeast Siberia, partic¬
ularly Chukotka, remained little studied in an¬
thropological terms until the beginning of the
19th century. The best data on the peoples of
Northeast Siberia were collected mainly in 1 900—
1901 by the Jesup Expedition, organized by the
American Museum of Natural History in New
York with the participation of the Russian Acad¬
emy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, in which
eminent Russian scientists, namely W. Bogoras
and W. Jochelson, took part.

The present exhibition and publication. Cross¬
roads of Continents, in which Soviet and North
American artifacts have been combined for the
first time, represent another example of the
fruitful cooperation between anthropologists and
museums of the two continents.

Hemisphere

pour voir

i.ks Ikkrf.s

.SEPTENTRIONAL
V:

plus tlil’liiKtc ment

I ‘itr (i’iiil/<niinr 1 UTtlle
’.‘tin.i iltez Liutatr V A
.net Privilege / f

Arctiqiks

tie lAcklleimtRdts Sut-n
It Quay Jt l/fi’i/i’i/t
Jiiillct i~Ji 4-

Crossroads of Continents: Beringian Oecumene

William W. Fitzhugh and Aron Crowell

Northeastern Siberia and Alaska — the rugged
and remote lands that rim the North Pacific —
were among the last regions on earth to be
described by Western explorers and cartogra¬
phers, or to be coveted in the courts of Europe
and Russia. The North Pacific remained a great
blank on world maps well into the 18th century,

then began a long and complex process of
cultural change, adaptation, and diversification
which generated the brilliant spectrum of hunt¬
ing, fishing, and herding cultures in place at the
time of first contact with explorers.

The 18th century explorations of Vitus Bering,
James Cook, Joseph Billings, and other naviga-

■

Reindeer Herders' Camp
Reindeer Chukchi: AMNH neg. 11153
During the late winter and spring
some Reindeer Chukchi grazed their
herds in the grassy tundra along the
Kolyma River. The Kolyma District
was also important because of the
Aniui trade fair established here in
1788 after pacification following the
Chukchi-Cossack wars (fig. 316). This
photograph is a summer scene show¬
ing an abandoned camp.

Circumpolar Map
Guillaume Deslisle, 1714
AMHA B85.55

The North Pacific is a great blank,
and Alaska does not exist on this
early 18th-century French map.

Based on the best information then
available, it shows detailed geograph¬
ical knowledge of the areas of North
America claimed by England, France,
and Spain. The Siberian coast is
poorly known, and the lands of Yeso
and Terre de la Campagne (Company
Land) north and east of Japan are
geographic phantoms.

less known to outsiders than the unexplored
heart of Africa. Yet this vast northern wilderness
of mountains, forests, tundra, and ice, geograph¬
ically linking the continents of Eurasia and North
America, was in no sense an uninviting waste¬
land. Sea mammals and fish abound in its cold
but nutrient-rich ocean waters, and its rivers
run red and silver each summer with surging
millions of salmon. Caribou, moose, beaver, and
dozens of other species live off the resources of
the land year-round, while whales and streaming
flocks of migratory birds arrive each year to
reap the nightless arctic summer's burst of plant
and plankton growth. This environment, harsh
as it is climatically, offers a bountiful living to
human beings culturally prepared to take ad¬
vantage of its natural resources for food, cloth¬
ing, and shelter. Human populations began mov¬
ing into Northeastern Siberia over 16,000 years
ago from the more temperate regions of eastern
Asia, spreading north and east with the passing
of the last Ice Age until they crossed into the
Americas via Alaska. That great migration was
only the beginning of the story, for the popu¬
lations that had settled in the North Pacific region

tors, and the penetration of Siberia and then
Alaska by Russian fur traders, marked the be¬
ginning of a period of intensive (and increasingly
destructive) contact with North Pacific peoples
that held more than a few surprises for the
Europeans. From Kamchatka to the Arctic Ocean,
from the Aleutian Islands to the mountainous,
fjorded coasts of British Columbia, these ex¬
plorers found the North Pacific Rim inhabited
by peoples well and warmly dressed and housed,
equipped with ingenious and effective tools and
weapons, organized in large groups with wide-
ranging political and economic contacts, and
possessed of complex religious beliefs, striking
artistic traditions, often elaborate social institu¬
tions, and a vast practical knowledge of the
environment. Most Europeans in the North Pa¬
cific during the early historical period seem to
have been blinded by their own cultural preju¬
dices, unable to appreciate the wonder of what
they witnessed, yet some had open eyes. Martin
Sauer, a member of the Billings Expedition sent
to northern Russia and America by Russia's
Catherine the Second in 1785—94, wrote:

1. Cultures of the North
Pacific-Bering Sea Region ca. 1900

Ocean

Arctic

NORTHWEST

TERRITORIES

Beaufort

Limit of

Great Bear
Lake

r ackenzitSt

Rnv

Great Slave
Lake

/ Lake
Athabasca

North Alaskan
Eskimo

Athapaskan \

~ tL iv'

'.hukchi

Sea

Noatak

Western

Woods

Cree

K°buk^

YUKON TERRITORY

British Columbia!

'ALASKA!

Norton Sou

Bering Sea
r Eskimo/^-7,

Lawrence

Plateau

Groups

- Tlingit

BSlla Coola<

Pacific Eskimo

Nunivak I.

Queen

Charlotte'

/ff/ J’i - Afognak
r. ..cLT'i ?

Bristol

Haida^"A

IJKiit of pack 'G®

Pribilof Is.

Nootka

Aleut

Ocean

Arctic

NORTHWEST

TERRITORIES

Yakut

Beaufort

I Great Bear
Lake

lackenzioj

Bay

Great Slave
Lake

J Lake
Athabasca

North Alaskan
Eskimo

Athapaskan \

Chukchi

Sea

Noatak

Western

* * ^"«°buky

.YUKON TERRITORY

ly^a/ia's

British columbia|

f'ALASKAI

Gulf of

Nanai Ulcha

Plateau

Groups

- Tlingit

Sella Coola<

fJmM

Queen
Charlotte 1

Haida '

Nootka

Pribilof Is.

Hokkaido \

1. Cultures of the North
Pacific-Bering Sea Region ca. 1900

Limn 0/ p 0/ar

J ;* f Chukchi

AMUR REGION

IP . . . , P Even f Y.V

KHABAROVSK REG *»/ of '» % *f V-TSSS”5

C"- - - L - \ /ft MAGADAN REGION •' .-f ‘ . 1 Y ^4-0'® #

v / // “St.

<£a/ - - >€c >,T << )

Negidal 0" ■ ' *<• \\ „h'

Amur River- _ - — ~"r’" °' pack Koryak ^7/?^

- if w..u _ " ~e — i "'W

albertaX Woods
\ \ Cree

rfWTpft

* -‘/'V

Bering Sea
SI Eskimo ,*/

Lawrence * \

Nunivak I. \ . . . , i ^£5

Bristol N

" '-twt_0f pacK'S " iBay/ (* ^ ' 7 '

Aleut

I Aleutian

V - w* *

The capacity of the natives of these islands [the
Aleutians] infinitely surpasses every idea that I had
formed of the abilities of savages . . . Their behaviour
. . . is not rude or barbarous, but mild, polite, and
hospitable. At the same time, the beauty, proportion,
and art with which they make their boats, instruments,
and apparel evince that they by no means deserve
to be termed stupid; an epithet so liberally bestowed
upon those whom Europeans call savages (Sauer
1802:273-74).

Sauer's sentiments reflect the beginnings of
interest in the North Pacific as a unique and
fascinating cultural realm, from which flowed
the early collection of "curiosities" — masks, robes,
weapons, and diverse other examples of native
art and design — that were deposited in fledgling
Russian and European museums. The Russian
Academy of Science's early 19th century spon¬
sorship of systematic, scientifically oriented col¬
lecting among the North Pacific peoples opened
up a new era of museum-based anthropological
research in the region. The Smithsonian Insti¬
tution, the American Museum of Natural History,
and other American and Canadian museums
continued this tradition after Russia's sale of
Alaska to the United States in 1867, culminating
in the American Museum's Jesup North Pacific
Expedition to Siberia and the Northwest Coast
(1897-1903).

Russian Smithsonian Institution

Voznesenskn 1840-49 V,[\ Vy.-I Swan 1860-81

3 Zagoskin 1842-44 V///A Dali 1865-74

Nelson 1878-81
Jesup Expedition Fisher 1879-94

Boas 1886-1900 IIIIHHWlH Ray/Murdoch 1881-83

Laufer 1898-99
Bogoras 1900-1901
Jochelson 1900-1901

Crossroads of Continents combines modern
research in North Pacific anthropology and ar¬
cheology with the presentation of many impor¬
tant objects from these early collections. This
book and exhibition attempt to capture the wide
diversity of North Pacific cultures as well as
their historical development from the end of the
last Ice Age to the modern day. Individual
cultures are considered both in particular and
as components of a pan-North Pacific "oecu-
mene" — an ensemble of related peoples inte¬
grated by trade, migration, warfare, and the
cross-fertilization of ideas, oral traditions, and
art into a large cultural universe. Cross-cultural

topics considered at this level include economy,
technology, housing, clothing, religion, and art.
Against this ancient tradition of trans-Beringian
interchange, periods of political isolation, such
as experienced recently, have been transient.
The long historical tradition of linkages provides
a compelling rationale for combining Soviet and
American collections and scholarship in an ex¬
hibition and publication broad enough in scope
to examine the North Pacific as a whole, with
the ultimate goal of achieving new understand¬
ings both of and between peoples on both sides
of Bering Strait.

3. Anthropological Research and
Collecting, 1840-1901

Finds of imported objects in archeo¬
logical sites around the North Pacific
Rim document prehistoric interest in
"foreign'' cultures. The first-known
ethnographic observations by Europe¬
ans were those made by Dezhnev in
1648 and Steller in 1741 (Golder
1914; Ray 1975). The earliest extant
ethnographic objects connected with
known expeditions are those collected
by James Cook's 1778 visit and the
Billings-Sarychev Expedition of 1785-
94. After 1800, recognition of the
importance of documentation and
preservation increased the value of
ethnographic collections and set in
motion the great collecting era of the
19th century. This map indicates the
major collectors and study regions
represented in the Crossroads exhibi¬
tion.

North Pacific Peoples and Environments

2. Alaskan Native Costumes
Artist unknown, possibly Aleksandr
F. Postels, 1827. Private Collection
Like the cultures of the North Pacific
region generally, Alaska Natives
wore highly distinctive costumes,
each culture having its own style,
materials, and methods of manufac¬
ture. Ceremonial dress worn by high-
ranking individuals was especially
elaborate, as shown in this water-
color representing the three principal
Alaskan cultures of Russian America.
At the left is an Aleut dressed in an
embroidered gutskin kamleika
(parka). He wears a gutskin bag and
a bentwood hunting hat decorated
with painted designs, glass beads,
and sea lion whiskers.

The middle figure is a Koniag Es¬
kimo dressed in a feather coat made
of pelagic cormorant skins and an
embroidered headdress. Standing to
the right is a Tlingit noble wearing a
Chilkat blanket, a painted spruce-root
hat, Athapaskan beaded trousers, and
a large knife. The background figures
are Tlingit commoners or slaves.

Crossroads of Continents focuses on the arc of
lands and islands that surrounds the northern
reaches of the Pacific Ocean and its component
and adjacent seas: the Sea of Okhotsk, the Bering
Sea, and, north of Bering Strait, the Chukchi Sea
(fig. 1). Located between 50 to 70 degrees North
latitude, these regions experience a great variety
of climatic regimes ranging from extremely cold
arctic coast and inland continental climates to
more moderate subarctic maritime climates that
are foggy and stormy but rarely below freezing.

Archeological data presented in this catalogue
demonstrate the early development of complex
and diverse cultures around the North Pacific
Rim as the first occupants adapted to these
regional environments. The primary focus of
Crossroads, however, is on the ethnographic
peoples of the 18th— 19th centuries. Unfortu¬
nately, it has not been possible to extend the
full coverage given to the early ethnographic
period into the 20th century, although the latter
period is treated in essays dealing with Siberian
and Alaskan social, political, and cultural devel¬
opments.

Cultures of Northeastern Siberia are repre¬
sented by four groups, the southwesternmost a
composite of Chinese and Japanese influenced
cultures (Gilyak, Nanai, and others) living along
the lower Amur River and nearby maritime
regions (fig. 1). The remaining Northeast Sibe¬
rian cultures, originally designed linguistically
as Paleoasiatic peoples, include the Even (for¬
merly called Lamut), a reindeer herding culture
living west of the Sea of Okhotsk; the Koryak
and Itelmen (Kamchadal) of Kamchatka and
adjacent maritime regions; and, farthest to the
northeast, the Chukchi, who like the Koryak,
were divided between reindeer breeders on the
interior and maritime sea mammal hunters on
the coast. These groups are to be distinguished
from the central Siberian Evenk (Tungus) and
Yakut, who bordered the Northeastern Siberian
Paleoasiatics on the west and from whom the
latter had acquired many features of their tech¬
nology, clothing, art, as well as their reindeer¬
breeding economy.

North Amercian cultures are represented by
four groups: Eskimo and Aleut, and two Indian
groups, Tlingit and Athapaskan. Although Es¬
kimo cultures extend into Canada and Green¬
land, only the Alaskan groups (North Alaskan,
Asiatic, Bering Sea, and Pacific Eskimo) are
discussed here. Also represented are the Aleut,
whose occupation of the Aleutian Island chain
made them the most maritime adapted of all
North Pacific peoples. Of the many Northwest

Coast Indian groups, we concentrate on the
northernmost, the Tlingit, and refer occasionally
to Haida, Tsimshian, Kwakiutl, Nootka, and Makah.
The final group is made up of the many tribes
of Alaskan Athapaskan Indians, forest dwellers
whose life was based on hunting, trapping, and
fishing.

Geographic patterning is a notable feature of
the economies and culture types of these North
Pacific groups. On both sides of Bering Strait,
the southern limit of the greater North Pacific
culture area discussed here was dominated by
cultures with salmon fishing economies. To the
north, the coastal economies of Siberia and
Alaska were increasingly oriented toward a com¬
bination of salmon fishing and sea mammal
hunting, with the hunting of the large sea mam¬
mals (whales) most characteristic of Bering Strait
and North Alaskan Eskimo and Chukchi. Away
from the coast, where ease of travel and similar
environmental conditions over wide areas pro¬
moted cultural diffusion and convergence, econ¬
omies differed dramatically. Siberian interior
groups had adopted reindeer breeding as their
economic mainstay, while in Alaska, Athapaskan
people retained a traditional hunting and fishing
economy without any domestic animals except
dogs.

These patterns were strongly conditioned by
ecological boundaries, especially the northern
forest and shrub limit on land and the seasonally
moving southern boundary of the arctic pack
ice, which extends into the southern Okhotsk
Sea and Bering Sea in winter and in summer
withdraws to the northern Chukchi Sea. The
association of animals adapted to particular
ecological zones, together with the annual mi¬
gration of other species across these boundaries,
established the basic parameters for human life.
Year-round adaptation to the most severe arctic
conditions was a challenge that took Beringian
peoples ten thousand years to perfect but which
eventually led to human expansion into arctic
regions north of Bering Strait — the last area of
the world to be settled by preindustrial peoples.

Finally, a significant feature of the Beringian
region is the meeting here of converging cir¬
cumpolar bands of tundra and boreal ecological
zones and their intersection with the biologically
rich coasts of the North Pacific and Arctic Ocean.
As a result of this convergence, ways of life
adapted to different circumpolar and northern
maritime zones converged on Bering Strait, where
they mixed and were transformed (Gjessing
1944; Moberg 1960; Fitzhugh 1975).

Research Themes

Interest in the culture history of Siberian and
American peoples began with speculation on
the origin of the American Indian even before
knowledge of the Pacific Ocean and Bering Strait
existed (Acosta 1598). The first records on
Northeastern Siberian people date to the mid-
17th century (Golder 1914). Direct observations
on Siberian and American cultural relationships,
however, date to the early 18th century when
Stepan Krasheninnikov in 1735-41 and Georg
Wilhelm Steller in 1741 noted specific similari¬
ties between these regions (Okladnikova
1987:220). Possibly these reports influenced
Thomas Jefferson's ( 1 787) ideas about the Asian
origin of American Indians. Samuel Haven was
the first to identify the probability of a Bering
Strait entry route (Haven 1856). At this time
the notion of Beringian interchange was also
being pursued by American naturalists, among
them the Smithsonian's Spencer F. Baird, who
initiated collecting projects in northwestern North
America in the 1850s. However, it was not until
Franz Boas was appointed curator at the Amer¬
ican Museum of Natural History in New York in
1 896 that scientific study of cultural relationships
across Bering Strait came clearly into focus.

Believing that Bering Strait must have been
the source of ethnic connections between Asia
and the Americas, Boas proposed studies rang¬
ing across the North Pacific in the regions closest
to their point of contact. Avoiding Alaska, which
had been studied by Smithsonian naturalists.
Boas proposed research in the remaining gaps.
Unknown Northeastern Siberia and the North¬
west Coast received the greatest attention. Boas's
Jesup North Pacific Expedition, named after its
benefactor, American Museum President Morris
K. Jesup, was an anthropological tour de force,
a grandiose, brilliantly conceptualized, and mas¬
terfully orchestrated attack on one of the most
important problems in American anthropology.
At its heart was a close collaboration between
the American Museum of Natural History and
the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences and
its Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography.

The Jesup Expedition (1897-1903) produced
a vast body of ethnographic, linguistic, folkloric,
and physical anthropological data (Boas 1903).
Based on these data, Boas and his Russian
collaborators, ethnologists Waldemar Bogoras
and Waldemar Jochelson, concluded that the
North Pacific groups studied were of a single
racial type; that they held many cultural, lin¬
guistic, and folkloristic elements in common; and
that these elements indicated a common cultural
base, formerly more widespread than at present,
encompassing northeastern Asia, Alaska, and
the Northwest Coast. Ties between Siberians
and Northwest Coast groups with Alaskan Es¬
kimos were seen as being weaker, with Aleuts
intermediate between the two. Boas (1905:99)
decided that "Chukchee, Koryak, Kamchadal and
Yukaghir must be classed with the American
race rather than with the Asiatic race.”

4. Bentwood Hunting Hat
Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 38717
This hunting hat collected by Edward
W. Nelson from Kaialigamut in the
Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta depicts a
bird spirit with supernaturally spiked
head and red-circled eye against a
white background. The spirit por¬
trayed may be Raven, the trickster
and demiurge prominent in Siberian
and Alaskan mythology. Similarities
in Raven mythology were cited by
Boas and his Jesup Expedition collab¬
orators as an indication of ethnic
links between Siberian and North
American cultures. Raven images are
rare in Bering Sea Eskimo art, per¬
haps because of the powerful and un¬
predictable nature of this being.

These observations were later explained in a
three-stage reconstruction of historical events,
the first being the initial peopling of the New
World across Bering Strait at the end of the Ice
Age. The second involved a back-migration of
American cultures into Northeastern Siberia (Boas
1910:534), later designated the Americanoid
theory (Boas 1925, 1933; Bogoras 1902; Joch¬
elson 1905). Boas proposed to account for the
lack of evidence of close ties between the North
Pacific groups and Eskimo culture as a result of
the Eskimos' recent arrival in western Alaska
from Canada (Boas 1905:99), a theory that later
became known as the "Eskimo wedge” hypoth¬
esis (Collins 1937:4).

These conclusions were offered as preliminary
findings, and because Boas never wrote the
concluding volume anticipated in the Jesup
Expedition series the full results of this project
have never been synthesized. Despite attention
to some of these questions (Boas 1925, 1933;
Chowning 1962; Count 1949; Levin 1958; Hatt
1949; Jochelson 1925, 1926a; Leroi-Gourhan
1946; Michael and VanStone 1983), the study
of North Pacific culture history in the 20th
century has declined, victimized by the break in
political relations between the Soviet Union and
Western nations. Today many of the conclusions

5. Quivers and Arrows

Chukchi: AMNH 70-698Ga. Athapas-
kan: MAE 5801-2; NMNH 43352
(arrows)

Similar types of material culture
show that Bering Strait was not a
physical barrier to communication be¬
tween cultures of the North Pacific
Rim. Objects of similar type were
used in both Siberia and Alaska, and
these types often exhibit clinal varia¬
tion, gradual change in form and de¬
sign from one region to the next.

6. Koryak Egg Gatherers
AMNH neg. 22094, Jesup Exp.

Eggs are an important source of fresh
food for northern peoples when the
birds return to nest in early summer.
Some birds, like gulls and eiders,
nest in open country, and their eggs
fall prey to foxes and other birds.

The best egg collecting, however, is
found at bird cliffs where huge num¬
bers of birds nest in dense colonies
over the water.

7. Koryak Shaman

AMNH neg. 42119, Jesup Exp.
Shamanism, the art of influencing
events by the manipulation of guard¬
ian spirits, is one of the oldest and
most basic forms of religious expres¬
sion and was the dominant form of
religious practice among North Pacific
peoples. As curers, diviners, and in¬
termediaries between people and
spirits, shamans were a powerful
force in society.

from the Jesup Expedition have been replaced
by new theories in which a combination of local
development and diffusion have replaced mi¬
gration as the major explanation for North Pacific
and Beringian culture change, while many of
the ethnographic and folklore links remain unex¬
plored and unexplained.

Crossroads of Continents: Project History

In 1977 initiatives were taken in discussions
between Iu.V. Bromlei, Director of the Institute
of Ethnography of the Soviet Academy of Sci¬
ences, and William W. Fitzhugh and William C.
Sturtevant of the Smithsonian Institution. Al¬
though Soviet-Amercian exchange symposia on
Beringian cultural interactions had been held,
they did not involve collections research or
exhibition work, and the results were not subject
to wide public dissemination. These discussions
soon led to the idea for an exhibition of North

Pacific ethnography and archeology to be as¬
sembled jointly from the earliest and most im¬
portant collections of the Soviet Union and the
United States. This was a project that neither
country could hope to mount independently due
to the scattered distribution of the necessary
collections. Rather than simply exchanging ob¬
jects, as is the norm for most international
exhibitions. Crossroads would be assembled as
a single, fully integrated exhibition, jointly re¬
searched and curated by American and Soviet
scholars.

A unique feature of the project was the unu¬
sual history of North Pacific and Beringian eth¬
nological studies. The earliest Alaskan ethno¬
graphic collections came from 18-1 9th century
efforts of Russian explorers and scientists during
the days when Alaska was part of the Russian
colony known as Russian America (1741-1867).
These collections have resided for more than a
century in the Museum of Anthropology and
Ethnography in Leningrad, where they have not
been readily accessible to American and Cana¬
dian scholars, nor have they been available to
the American public or to the native peoples
whose ancestors made them. Similarly, because
early Russian ethnographic collecting was con¬
ducted primarily in the territories of Russian
America, Soviet institutions do not have large,
early Siberian ethnological collections that can
compare with those assembled in New York as
a result of the Jesup Expedition. Crossroads
created a structure for research and exhibition
of these alienated and remarkable collections
and provided an opportunity to view the an¬
thropology and history of the North Pacific in
the original Boasian vision of an integrated
geographic and cultural realm.

In this sense, Crossroads of Continents as an
exhibition and a publication may be viewed as
a slightly delayed summary volume of Franz
Boas's Jesup Expedition series. But more im¬
portantly, we see Crossroads as a beginning,
not an end. We propose no final solutions to the
problems of Siberian-American culture links; our
intent has been simply to document, as fully
and currently as possible, the diversity of and
interrelationships between Siberian and Amer¬
ican cultures. Final answers to the problems of
the peopling of the New World and subsequent
thousands of years of Siberian-American cultural
interchange await future research. Study of the
enthnography, folklore, and culture history of
this region is in an early developmental stage;
each year brings major new understandings and
new problems.

In keeping with the spirit of Franz Boas and
Morris K. Jesup, who in their day created a
program of international research to generate

new understandings of this unique region, we
dedicate this volume to hopes for future collab¬
oration and contacts among scholars, native
peoples, and the wider public interested in
northern studies, and we plea for the preser¬
vation and care of ancient historical objects and
information, the basic documents of the region's
unwritten culture history. As we enter a new
age, in which Pacific and Arctic regions are
assuming great importance in the world at large
and our Eurocentric and Atlantic outlook is being
modified toward a dawning age of the Pacific,

we look forward to better understanding of
cultural origins, more respect for cultural diver¬
sity, and more open communication, exchange,
and research. Once again we hope to see these
northern peoples and cultures as through the
eyes of Martin Sauer. In this celebration of
diversity and common ties, so evident in the
pages that follow, we look forward to an era
symbolized today by the historic reopening of
direct contacts between the peoples of Alaska
and Siberia that is taking place even as this book
goes to press.

8. Chilkat Tunic

Tlingit: NMNH 229789
When discovered by Europeans,
Northwest Coast peoples were found
to have the most stylistically complex
art of any hunting and fishing culture
of the Americas. Northwest Coast art
was based on the conventionalization
of distinctive features of animals,
often represented in humanoid form.

9. Eskimo Trade Fair

E. W. Nelson, 1881: SI neg. 6387
Trade across Bering Strait was an
ancient pattern that intensified in the
18th century as Russian goods be¬
came available in Siberia and rein¬
deer herding groups started produc¬
ing a tradable surplus of hides.
Chukchi tobacco, glass beads, rein¬
deer skins, and iron were exchanged
for Alaskan furs, jade, and other
products (fig. 316). At times hostile,
these contacts are documented in Es¬
kimo oral history and tales of distant
times. The trans-Beringian trade ex¬
panded dramatically after the organi¬
zation of Russian-Native trade fairs in
Siberia. By 1800 a network of Rus¬
sian posts in southern Alaska pro¬
vided a direct source of trade goods
on the American side of Bering
Strait. After the whaling era began in
1848, Siberian- Alaskan Native trade
was partially replaced by direct con¬
tacts with American whaling vessels.

10. Engraved Ivory Winged Object

Ekven site. Old Bering Sea culture:
MAE 6479-612

The elaborate art seen in many ethno¬
graphic cultures of the North Pacific
developed from a variety of prehisto¬
ric artistic traditions. Only a few of
these, primarily the 2,500-1,500-
year-old cultures of Bering Strait
(Okvik, Old Bering Sea, and Ipiutak),
are known archeologically. Early Es¬
kimo art, which has links to Chinese
and Scytho-Siberian animal-style art,
played an important role in hunting
magic and spiritual life.

The existence of an elaborate, fully
developed art supported by complex
ritual beliefs dating to ca. 500 b.c.
suggests early origins for these fea¬
tures of North Pacific Rim cultures.

11. Lime Mortar
Haida: CMC VII-B-1000

The Tlingit and Haida grew a native
tobacco, their only cultivated plant
before European contact. The tobacco
was dried, pulverized, and mixed
with lime made from burned shell.
The tobacco and lime was held in the
mouth, rather than smoked, until the
custom of smoking was introduced in
the early historic period. Trade to¬
bacco soon replaced the homegrown
variety, which is no longer found in
the area. Lime was ground in small
mortars, such as this one, beautifully
carved from a sperm whale tooth.

Ethnic Connections Across Bering Strait

I. S. Gurvich

13. Ivory Bolas

Norton Sound Eskimo: NMNH 38444
One of many implement types shared
by peoples of Alaska and Siberia, the
bolas was used to hunt ducks and
other waterfowl. Its distribution was
confined largely to Eskimo areas and
to coastal groups in Northeastern Si¬
beria, where it may have been intro¬
duced by contact with Eskimo peo¬
ples. During bird hunting season,
men wore the bolas wound around
their heads where it could be
grasped and thrown at a moment's
notice. Eskimo bolas usually have
four to eight weights whose lines are
attached to a central knot or to a
feather quill handle. Feather orna¬
ments are common and probably had

12. Birdskin Parka

St. Lawrence Island Eskimo: NMNH

418612

Birdskin clothing was light, durable,
waterproof, and warm. More common
in Alaska than Siberia, it was most
important on St. Lawrence, Nunivak,
and Kodiak islands, and in the Aleu¬
tian chain, where caribou — which
provided the warmest fur — were not
present. This parka was made from
the skins of more than 75 crested
auklets, which breed in large colonies
in the cliffs of St. Lawrence Island. It
is trimmed with a fur ruff.

This bolas was collected from Inu-
piat Eskimos of eastern Norton
Sound. Its red incised decoration in¬
cludes the raven's foot motif com¬
monly used in western Alaskan Es¬
kimo art. The image of Raven
himself, however, is almost never fig¬
ured, perhaps out of respect for his
powerful and unpredictable spirit.

Raven mythology is even more
widely distributed among peoples of
the North Pacific than the bolas and
has been cited as important evidence
of ethnological connections between
the cultures of North America and
Northeastern Siberia.

Similarities between the cultures of northern
Siberia and northwestern North America have
long attracted the attention of archeologists,
ethnographers, and historians. These similarities
provide important information on relationships
and development of both ancient and historical
cultures, and on the ethnic groups that inhabit
this huge region. Obviously, in the Bering Sea
region, not only in remote antiquity but in times
relatively close to our own, trade between in¬
dividual ethnolinguistic groups took place as
well as shifts in population resulting from changes
in economic conditions. Certainly, Bering Strait,
which separates northeastern Asia from North
America by a width of 56 miles, did not present
a significant barrier to contacts between the
populations of the adjacent regions.

Ethnographic literature frequently contains
evidence on Eskimo-Koryak and Eskimo-Chukchi
linguistic conformities, suggesting that these
reciprocal influences date from ancient times
(Bogoraz 1935:357, 1939:27, 96; Vdovin 1961:27-
63). Thus, for example, not only along the
seacoast of Kamchatka but in the region of the
Tauisk inlet, Eskimo place-names occur (Vdovin

ritual function.

1973:265), even though Eskimo people do not

now occupy these regions. Such place-names
suggest a former Eskimo occupation of this
region during the Thule or Punuk whaling period
when Eskimo toggling harpoons, seal nets made
from thong, skin-covered kayaks and umiaks,
waterproof gutskin garments, and other items
were carried from Bering Strait south into Chu¬
kotka and Kamchatka by Eskimo peoples who
later became assimilated into other societies. At
the same time, the northern cultures contain
features characteristic of southern regions, such
as braiding of grass nets, mats, and baskets and
use of bird skins for clothing and boot insoles.

The peoples of Northeastern Siberia known
as the Paleoasiatics (Koryak, Chukchi, Yukaghir,
Itelmen, and Nivkhi) used certain hunting tools
widespread among Eskimo populations in North
America but little known in the rest of northern
Asia. Among these are bolas with their feather
handles, spear-throwers, and fishnets woven
from reindeer sinew, grass, and baleen. Shared
elements also include certain kinds of dugout
canoes and the method of weir fishing found
among the Itelmen, peoples of the Amur, and
river fishermen of North America. Methods of
cleaning fish and preserving meat by fermen¬
tation are also similar.

Certain types of transportation equipment are
distributed across Bering Strait. Snowshoes played
an important role among peoples of the North
Pacific Rim (Levin and Potapov 1961:82—85) and
were used by Paleoasiatic groups (including the
Amur River Nivkhi), Asiatic Eskimo, and many
groups in northern North America. However,
snowshoes were not used in historical times by
Asiatic peoples distant from coastal zones, where
their place was taken by skis. On distributional
evidence it has been suggested that snowshoes
were brought to northeastern Asia and North
America by an early wave of peoples and that
skis replaced snowshoes in north-central Siberia
more recently. The use of snow goggles, to
protect the eyes from being burned by the bright
late-winter sun reflecting on the snow, is also
seen on both sides of Bering Strait. The presence
of such equipment as snowshoes and snow
goggles can be explained, in part, by similarities
in physical conditions and by similar economic
circumstances of the peoples using them; but in

many instances reciprocal influences must also
have been involved.

Archeological materials and information from
explorers and ethnographers document the use
of a special type of dwelling by a variety of
North Pacific peoples. This type of house is
semisubterranean, excavated below ground level,
with walls arranged in a four-cornered plan and
made of a combination of logs covered with
earth or sod, which acted as insulation from the
cold. Two forms of sod houses were used in the
North Pacific, one by the Eskimos and another
by the peoples of the Aleutian Islands and
Kamchatka. Sod houses with side or under¬
ground entrances through the floor were used
by Eskimo groups on both sides of Bering Strait
but were abandoned in the historical period of
the Asian side. The Aleut-Kamchatka— style sod
house had an entrance through the center of the
roof. Similarities between Asian and Alaskan
Eskimo houses certainly result from historical
contacts between these culturally similar neigh¬
boring regions. Similarities between the Aleut
and Kamchatka houses are more difficult to
explain and have been cited for many years as
evidence of direct contacts between these peo¬
ples.

The North Pacific coast also saw the devel¬
opment of distinctive forms of clothing. Anthro¬
pologists, following the detailed analyses of
Gudmund Hatt, have long noted similarities in
both the general cut and detailed patterns of
northern clothing and boots linking Paleoasiatics
with Asiatic, Alaskan, and Greenlandic Eskimos,
and with Aleut, Tlingit, and Athapaskan peoples.
Details in clothing testify to the close cultural
connections between peoples of this region.

Thus, for example, Koryak and Chukchi parkas
are equipped with small fur bibs to protect the

14. "Summer and Winter Habitations
in Kamtschatka"

John Webber. AMHA 71.224.6
This drawing by John Webber, artist
on Capt. James Cook's expedition to
the North Pacific in 1778, illustrates
the habitations of the Koryak in Kam¬
chatka. Early explorers, notably Ste¬
pan Krasheninnikov (1755), noted
many similarities between peoples of
the Aleutian Islands and Kamchatka.
Both of these groups had a strong
maritime economy and lived in per¬
manent villages. One of the most
striking parallels between these
groups was their underground
houses, entered by ladder through a
hole in the roof.

15. Snow Goggles
Koryak: AMNH 70-2723
Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 48996
Among other items of technology
shared by North Pacific peoples are
snow goggles. As in the case of the
bolas, their distribution is linked to
Eskimo culture and areas influenced
by them. Snow goggles were used by
travelers and hunters for protection
against snow blindness, a painful and
crippling inflammation of the retina.

Koryak goggles (left) are similar to
those used by the North Alaskan Es¬
kimo. The Eskimo goggles are carved
in a zoomorphic representation that
emphasizes masking and animal-
human transformation, important
concepts in Alaskan Yupik Eskimo
culture.

16. "Natives of Qonalaschka, and
their Habitations"

John Webber. PMH 41-72-10/506
Aleut people lived nearly entirely
from the resources of the sea, their
islands having no land animals larger
than foxes. In this regard, they were
the most completely maritime of all
North Pacific peoples. Early explorers
were struck by their highly developed
society, which included refined tech¬
nology and art, complex social and
ceremonial life, and elaborate sys¬
tems of knowledge. The Aleut lived
in large groups in permanent villages
near productive fishing and sea mam¬
mal hunting locations. They were
skilled boatsmen, and their kayaks
won accolades from European mari¬
ners for lightness, grace, and speed.

Like Koryak dwellings, Aleut
houses were semisubterranean and
were entered by ladders through
holes in the roof. But in other re¬
spects, scholars see few similarities
between these ethnographic cultures
today. Little is known of Aleut pre¬
history. Studies of interaction be¬
tween Siberian and Alaskan peoples
focus especially on the Eskimos of
Bering Strait and the Aleuts, whose
island habitat extends to within a few
hundred miles of Kamchatka.

fur near the throat from freezing with moisture
from one's breath (figs. 272, 341). Similar bibs
are found in the clothing of certain groups of
Eskimos, Tlingit, and Plains Indians. The sleeve¬
less suede vest used by the Koryak in summer,
a type of poncho with fringes, not sewn up under
the arms, is analogous to garments used by
various tribes in the Americas. And until recent
times, a "tail" — an extension of the back flap —
was an obligatory design feature of the Koryak
funeral parka. This flap was richly ornamented
with reindeer hair embroidery and, more re¬
cently, with beads. Such a tail was not found
among the nearest neighbors of the Koryak but
was present among the Chukchi and in circular
or trapezoidal form among Asiatic Eskimos. The
tail had a functional purpose in being drawn
tightly between the legs and fastened in front
at the belt, protecting the hunter from cold when
sitting on the ice for long periods. Among the
Koryak this functional aspect of design had been
lost and was preserved in funeral dress. Among
Canadian and Greenland Eskimos a tail flap was
found only on female dress.

In Soviet literature in recent decades consid¬
erable attention has been focused on ornamen¬
tation as an important historical-ethnographic
source. Study of traditional ornamental art shows
it to be distinguished by significant stability,
frequently dating to distant times. Long ago,
Sternberg (1931) established that the strip or¬
namentation made from reindeer hair was pres¬
ent among many Asian peoples, including Chuk¬
chi, Koryak, Yukaghir, Even, Nivkhi, and American
Eskimo, and also among American Athapaskans,
who used porcupine quill instead of reindeer
hair. Similarities in designs themselves have
also been pointed out (fig. 295).

Detailed comparisons between the ornaments
of the peoples of Northeast Siberia and northwest
America carried out by S. V. Ivanov showed
that the so-called northern Siberian straight-
lined geometric ornament of strips, squares, and
rectangles, known to all northeastern Paleoa-
siatics, Asiatic Eskimos, Aleut, and Yukaghir,
was also widespread among American Eskimo.
The northern Asiatic type of ornament, the
composition of which includes concentric circles
and semicircles, star rosettes, and ovals, was
also quite characteristic of western American
Eskimos and Aleuts, and in Siberia of the Even
and Dolgan (Ivanov 1963:242). All of these
examples testify to the presence of ancient
cultural connections between the peoples of the
North Pacific Rim.

Common elements are found in the traditional
spiritual culture of the northeastern Paleoasiatics
and their neighbors on the American shore.
Seasonal animal harvest festivals of the Itelmen,
Koryak, Chukchi, and Asiatic Eskimos, which are
connected with the "rebirth" of game and con¬
tinuance of economic success, have close coun¬
terparts among the Eskimo, Tlingit, Athapas¬
kans, and other tribes. In both Siberia and North
America, these ceremonies included dances in
which people wore anthropomorphic and zoo-
morphic masks made of leather, wood, or bark,
although masking traditions in Siberia were
much less elaborate than those in northwestern
North America.

Along the North Pacific Rim and adjacent
areas, improvisational dances with rhythmic ex¬
pressive movements of the arms and body were
widely used to imitate animals. The performers
imitated the behavior of seals, running deer, or
peculiarities of bird habits. Dances were accom¬
panied by drum or tambourine, frequently with
vocal melodies, during festivals attended by
guests from neighboring villages or from further
afield. Trade and other social and economic
activities took place at such times.

Mythological legends about Raven are among
the strongest evidence of contacts between Itel¬
men, Chukchi, and Koryak on the one hand and
peoples of western Alaska and the Northwest
Coast on the other. Ancient Itelmen represen¬
tations of Raven as a hero-creator, often trans¬
formed into its antithesis, a traitor and liar,
correspond to Raven stories of the Tlingit (Me-
letinskii 1963) and Bering Sea Eskimo. Many
other Siberian folkloristic details also correspond
with North American ones. The well-known
investigator W. I. Jochelson believed that myth¬
ological evidence was strong enough to support
the proposition that the Koryak and Chukchi had
resettled northeastern Asia from Alaska (Jo¬
chelson 1907), even though he adduced little

other proof of this hypothesis. Contemporary
specialists do not support Jochelson's view (Levin
1958).

As is well known, customs associated with
funerals and human burial are often distin¬
guished by archaic or conservative practices.
This is also an area exhibiting striking similarities
between Siberian and American cultures. Both
Chukchi and Eskimo had a custom of leaving
their dead out on the tundra to be eaten by the
foxes; a similar custom among the Itelmen is
paralleled by the Athapaskan Indians. Such a
list of similar practices and customs could easily
be expanded. For example, peoples on both
sides of Bering Strait, from the Lena River to
the eastern Aleutians, had a mortuary practice
of ritually dissecting the corpse and carrying out
mummification on parts of the body. Such ideas
must have been communicated through recip¬
rocal influences established in antiquity between
North Asia and America.

The indisputable similarity of many cultural
phenomena among the peoples who have, from
ancient times, inhabited the regions adjacent to
the North Pacific Rim is undoubtedly the result
of multiple causes. Among them should be
mentioned the long period of adaptation, lasting
many centuries if not millennia, during which
the aboriginal population accustomed itself to
the specific geographical surroundings and the
climate; the similar origins of some of the ethnic
groups concerned; ethnic mixing and its oppo¬
site, diversification; and, lastly, migration of
peoples and their mutual influences upon each
other.

According to historical evidence dating back
to the 18th century, the population of the mar¬
itime settlements of Chukotka since early times
had contact with the inhabitants of Alaska. Thus,
Asiatic Eskimos and coastal Chukchi frequently

visited settlements on the other side of the
Bering Strait to trade and participate in festivals.
As a consequence, they knew the Alaskan village
locations and set out each spring for them by
foot or dogsled (Merck 1978:54).

Sometimes, peaceful relations degenerated
into predatory campaigns. "Where there is trade —
there is plunder,” wrote Merck, a participant in
the North-Eastern Geographic Expedition of 1785—
98, who noted that the Chukchi crossed over to
America in their baidaras (umiaks) and attacked
the nomadic camps of the Alaskans, killing the
men and taking the women and children pris¬
oner. One of the principal objects of these raids
was the acquisition of Alaskan furs, which they
then traded to the Russians (Merck 1978:121).
Such warfare had a negative effect on trade
across Bering Strait between Chukchi and Alas¬
kan Eskimos. In 1891, for example, Chukchi
went to the American coast and found only
empty dwellings abandoned by the inhabitants
because the latter feared vengeance for having
slaughtered three boatloads of Chukchi who had
been cast upon the American coast in a storm.
At the end of the 18th century, after the Tsar's
government refused to subjugate the Chukchi
by force, there being few financial benefits for
such a course, the relations between the Chukchi
and their nearest neighbors — the Koryak and
Yukaghir — began to take the form of peaceful
trade. This apparently affected the contacts
between the Chukchi and Asiatic Eskimos on
the one hand and the population of Alaska on
the other. Thus in 1789, according to the infor¬
mation of the Russian Lieutenant of Cossacks I.
Kobelev, Chukchi in ten baidaras, numbering
about 150 men, set out for Alaska. The goal of

17. Trade and War

Drillbow, Cape Nome Eskimo: NMNH
44399. AMNH neg. 1545, Jesup Exp.
Relations across Bering Strait prob¬
ably always featured both trade and
war. These activities are documented
in exploration literature, in Chukchi
and Eskimo oral history, and on arti¬
facts. This drillbow engraving depicts
the greeting of Siberian traders at an
Alaskan Eskimo village. Annual trade
fairs were the chief means of ex¬
changing Alaskan and Siberian prod¬
ucts.

Peaceful relations often degener¬
ated into conflict over resources or
trading rights. Evidence of warfare is
known for the past 2,000 years in the
North Pacific region, its technology,
including use of fortified sites, slat
armor, shields, and sinew-backed
bows, was introduced from Asia. Jo¬
chelson's posed photograph showing
Koryak men dressed in iron plate ar¬
mor, helmets, and shields illustrates
typical Siberian war regalia.

18. Tobacco Pipe and Pouch
Even: AMNH 70-5623a,b
The tobacco, beads, and iron associ¬
ated with this Even pipe kit were
among the most important commodi¬
ties traded from Siberia to Alaska.
Because these products were distrib¬
uted from trading centers in western
Siberia, they commanded high prices
in Alaska, where they were ex¬
changed for furs, jade, and ivory (fig.
316).

this trip was trade. Like the Chukchi, the Alas¬
kans carried arms and wore armor. However,
as Kobelev noted, both sides were armed not
for battle but "as an example.”

The principal items of trade included furs,
Russian goods, beads, iron plates, knives, axes,
harpoon heads, and copper caldrons (fig. 316).
On the Asiatic coast there even was a sample
price list for prisoners. Reindeer Chukchi gave
10-12 caribou cows for an American female
prisoner, or two draft reindeer; children were
cheaper. The Chukchi used women prisoners to

19. Tobacco Pipe
Chukchi: MAE 442-25/2
The Chukchi — middlemen in the Ber¬
ing Strait trade — had a better supply
of tobacco and made many kinds of
smoking pipes. In addition to wood
pipes decorated with inlaid pewter
designs, pipes were carved from wal¬
rus ivory and were decorated with
engraved and sculpted forms, in this
case teams of dogs. This type of
sculpture, however, is more typical of
Koryak art.

20. Siberian Curios

Siberian Native: NMNH 44457 (box),

129219 (needlecase)

Exchanges between Siberians and
Alaskans included artifacts as well as
products and raw materials. Edward
Nelson collected this rifle capbox in
Nome, Alaska, but the designs on its
cover suggest a Siberian origin.
Clearer evidence of Siberian manu¬
facture is seen in designs on an ivory
needlecase collected by Lucien
Turner at St. Michael, Alaska, in the
1870s. A Russian American trading
post between 1833 and 1867, St. Mi¬
chael attracted native visitors from
throughout western Alaska. Turner
probably purchased this piece from
an Eskimo who had obtained it as a
souvenir of his Siberian encounters.

do much of the drudgery involved in camp life,
sometimes beat them, dressed them in shabby
clothes, and put them at the disposal of visitors.
Frequently women slaves acted as translators
in the barter trade.

In the first half of the 1 9th century a significant
influence on the peaceful relations between the
native populations of Chukotka and Alaska was
the establishment of the Russian trade fair on
the Aniui River, an eastern tributary of the
Kolyma. This fair was held each winter. Fixed
prices were introduced for Russian goods. Trade
on credit and the petty trade of the Cossacks
and industrialists were forbidden. A measure of
the economic success of this fair can be seen in
the value turnover during the second decade of
the 19th century, which reached 200,000 rubles
($100,000). In 1837, 100 beavers, 305 marten,
30 lynx, 31 sets of marten clothes, 13 sets of
desman (Eurasian muskrat) clothes, and so forth
were sold here (Bogoraz 1934:81). Beaver, mar¬
ten, and lynx furs came to the Chukotka fair
from Alaska. In this trade, the Chukchi acted as
intermediaries between Russian traders and the
inhabitants of Alaska.

In his report, the companion of Capt. F. P.
Wrangel, F. F. Matiushkin, provided a detailed
description of this fair. "The Chukchi,” he wrote,
"in our time are only intermediaries in the trade

between the Russians and Americans: they put
few of their own products into circulation, other
than reindeer hides. . . . The path of this people
into Ostrovnoe is quite remarkable: at first the
Chukchi cross from the Chukchi zone to America,
and having acquired furs and walrus bones there,
they set out for Ostrovnoe with their wives,
children, weapons, goods, reindeer and houses —
a real migration of peoples on a small scale. . . .
On the coast of the Chaunsk inlet they trade
their tired reindeer with nomadic tribes there
and continue further. . . . The Chukchi arrive in
Ostrovnoe at the end of January or beginning
of February. Here they stay for nine or ten days
and then they turn back on the same path.
Usually their caravan consists of 300 men, in¬
cluding 100 or 150 warriors.”

After the sale of Alaska in 1 867 the penetration
of American whalers, traders, and spirit haulers
into the Bering Sea area increased, and the
turnover of the Chukotka fair began to decline
and lost significance. The connections of the
continental regions of Chukotka with the popu¬
lation of Alaska weakened from this point on.

In the 1890s American entrepreneurs brought
1,280 domestic reindeer and a number of Chuk¬
chi herders from Chukotka to Alaska with hopes
of establishing a domestic reindeer economy. It
happened that the plan did not work out, mostly
because the Eskimos, being hunters unaccus¬
tomed to guarding and pasturing tame reindeer,
did not adopt this type of life, nor did they take
advantage of the methods of Chukchi herders,
such as the sledge, harness, and iaranga (rein¬
deer herders' tent). In addition, hostile relations
existed between the local Eskimos and the im¬
migrant Chukchi, who left Alaska and were later
replaced by Saami (Lapp) herders from Scan¬
dinavia. Further difficulties were encountered
because the Chukchi were reluctant to sell live
reindeer, thinking this would bring them bad
luck in their future relations with this animal.
This experiment to introduce domestic reindeer
breeding into Alaska showed that the adjustment
of hunters to a new economic occupation is a
complex process requiring special conditions and
a long period of time.

On the whole, the traditional material culture
of the peoples of the northern part of the Pacific
region, as seen from the evidence provided,
represents a complex phenomenon. It arose in
the setting of primitive natural economies and
communal relations when individual ethnic groups
formed under the influence of isolation. Never¬
theless, these ethnic groups interacted and in¬
fluenced one another. And during a lengthy
historical development in the northern part of
the Pacific Ocean, a chain of interconnected
traditional cultures became established.

j$5Eg£j

|||g||5p||p

■Hi

- 1

#S§®

mmm

Z'Xi&iSVSat

lit] Kinsmen
ed for Battle'

-. jrf}

isSis

tlflllT' '»<WH . .

_ _ -. i.

f 1

ffili

MMMi

, ■. .1

v r,{iaB

SHMBL..* '.-' rrMW

r 1

•><^pp

W^mmm

P§3*^ m

yal

... .

it ^

Peoples of the Amur and Maritime Regions

Lydia T. Black

The Lower Amur basin and the Maritime Prov¬
inces of the Soviet Far East, the Primorie, were,
in all probability, one of the major staging areas
from which groups of Asiatic Mongoloids spread
to the American continents in remote antiquity
and from which small groups continued to spread
to the Asian northeast in much more recent
periods. Ancient trade routes from China and
Mongolia passed through this region. The Amur,
"the great river,” one of the largest rivers of
the world, served as the highway along which
the populations moved and as the major route
of communication that bound together the Asiatic
interior and the Polar and Pacific shores. Since
time immemorial, the Amur basin was the meet¬
ing ground of peoples speaking various lan¬
guages and of most diverse cultural back¬

grounds: peoples speaking Turkic, Mongolian,
and Manchu-Tungus moved through the basin,
expanding into other areas or losing ground,
sometimes to fade from the pages of history
forever. Since the 17th century, the Chinese and
the Russian empires contested for dominion over
the region. In the 19th century, Russia finally
won control over the Amur, from the confluence
of the Shilka with the Argun to the Pacific, and
over the Ussuri River southward to the modern
Bay of Peter the Great, where the ports of
Vladivostok and, more recently, Nakhodka were
built.

The several indigenous groups that live in the
area today speak, with the exception of the
Nivkhi (Gilyak) whose language has not been so
far related to any language family, Manchu-

21. Nanai Woman's Coat
Decorative salmonskin coats were
worn as summer garments by peo¬
ples of the Lower Amur River. Those
worn by women were especially elab¬
orate. Decoration on the fronts of
these coats was limited to border de¬
signs; those on their backs were
more complex, composed of symmet¬
rical band and figure decor, often
representing abstract cocks and fish
(fig. 414). Designs were made with
patterns and stencils (fig. 287) that
were passed down from mother to
daughter. The designs and wrapa¬
round cut of Lower Amur area gar¬
ments reflect Chinese rather than Si¬
berian stylistic influence. AMNH 70-
628

Tungus languages. The speakers of the Southern
Tungusic languages, all closely related, are the
Nanai (Gold), of whom a small number resides
within the territory of China, while more than
10,000 live within the USSR, and the small
ethnic groups of the Ulcha on the Amur, the
Oroch and Udege of the Primorie, the Oroch
occupying coastal areas, and the Udege inhab¬
iting the taiga of the Ussuri River basin and the
Sikhote-Alin mountain range. The Orok, a very
small group resident on the island of Sakhalin,
also speak a Southern Tungusic language. The
Negidal, who in the 19th century migrated down
the Amgun and then the Amur rivers, speak a
Northern Tungusic language closely related to
that of the Evenk. The Nivkhi, whose language
is an isolate, occupy the mouth of the Amur and
a stretch of the coastal area of the Okhotsk Sea
to the north of it, and parts of Sakhalin Island.
The Ainu occupied a small area on southern
Sakhalin until the 1940s. The latter group, like
the Nivkhi, speak a language that is an isolate.
It is believed that the Ainu formerly occupied
territories on the mainland that they gave up
under pressure from the Manchu-Tungus speak¬
ing groups.

All these groups interacted with each other,
and all were subject to the same or similar
pressures from their more powerful and much
more numerous neighbors and overlords: the
Manchu, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Koreans,

and then, much more recently, the Russians.
Through the centuries, they borrowed from each
other not only items of material culture but also
aspects of belief and ritual, while maintaining
and, in some cases, developing (as was the case
of the Ulcha) independent ethnic identities.

For all groups, their economic mainstay was
fishing and hunting, both of land animals for
their own use and for trade of pelts to the
Chinese and the Russians, and, along the Pacific
shore, of the marine mammals. Those groups
that controlled good riverine fishing grounds,
such as the Nanai and the Nivkhi, were seden¬
tary, occupying permanent winter and summer
villages and following a seasonal transhumance
cycle. This mode of life may be traced in this
area to the Neolithic. Other groups, such as the
Evenk-descended Negidal, in the past had a
nomadic lifestyle oriented to taiga hunting and
to some degree reindeer breeding, and they
adopted permanent village life (as well as the
Chinese-style dwelling with interior heating sys¬
tem) only after they moved to the Amur and
settled near and among the Nanai and Nivkhi.
The Orok have remained to the present oriented
toward a reindeer economy. The Nanai, on the
other hand, among whom certain lineages claimed
to be aboriginal and some could be traced to
Ainu (probably the oldest population of the area),
occupied areas along the southern Amur tribu¬
taries, especially along the Sungari. Here they

22. Nanai Family Group
AMNH neg. 41614, Jesup Exp.
Reviewing Berthold Laufer's first at¬
tempts at field photography, Franz
Boas recommended he hire a profes¬
sional next time. The result was a
series of studio portraits, including
this Nanai (Gold) group. Nanai and
other ethnic groups of the Lower
Amur and Sakhalin have stronger
cultural relationships with eastern
Asian peoples than with northeastern
Siberians. Conical hats, wraparound
garments, and scroll decoration are
obvious markers of this affiliation.

came in close contact with the Chinese and even
mixed with them. Nanai (and the Nivkhi) paid
tribute to the Chinese tax collectors, traded with
the Chinese merchants (and to a somewhat
lesser extent with the Japanese via Sakhalin),
and from Chinese settlers in their territory learned
agriculture and domestic animal keeping, in¬
cluding horse breeding. Both the Nanai and the
Nivkhi were master metal workers; the craft was
introduced from China by Manchu. They did not
smelt ores themselves but made iron weapons,
spears, knives, and daggers, as well as iron slat
armor and battle helmets, to suit their taste from
metal scraps obtained elsewhere. These weap¬
ons, especially spearheads, were often elabo¬
rately inlaid.

Boat building was well developed among all
of the riverine and Pacific shore groups, and a
variety of watercraft was used, from birchbark
canoes, some of them covered and approaching
the skin kayak in shape and in manner of
construction, to large plank boats. The Nanai
used a double-bladed paddle, much like the
kayak paddle of the Aleuts, to propel their
birchbark canoes.

Dog breeding was highly developed, espe¬
cially among the Nivkhi, and dog transport was
the preferred mode of transportation in winter
(in summer, dogs were sometimes harnessed to
boats and towed them upstream). Dogs were
also used in hunting. In addition, men used a
variety of skis, reindeer or seal skin lined. All
men owned several pairs of skis, each pair
designed to meet specific snow conditions.

Woodworking was a major craft in which a
large tool inventory was employed, with metal
tools imported from Japan, China, and later

Russia. Wood was used for dwellings, sleds,
boats, domestic utensils, and so on. Carved
wooden dishes produced for festival use are
considered today works of art. Finely carved
boxes and cradles were made, though cradles
of birch bark were also used. Innumerable were
the wooden talismans for warding off illness or
bad luck. Dwellings, especially the permanent
winter dwellings, and grave houses were elab¬
orately ornamented. Bentwood technology was
also employed, especially for skis and sledge
runners but also for containers.

Birch bark was an important technological
material, used to cover summer dwellings, to
make hunting huts and blinds, to cover boat
cargo, and for summer bedding and various
small items, including women's tool bags and
patterns for applique embroidery. Women pro¬
duced decorated birch-bark baskets, trays, and
summer hats of exquisite beauty. Twined bas¬
ketry was made of a variety of materials, pre¬
dominantly grass, and mats and cordage were
made of nettle and other vegetable fibers.

The fishing technology was highly developed,
and several fishing methods were employed.
Salmon, and in earlier times sturgeon, provided
the basis of their economy, though other species,
such as carp, pike, and catfish, were also taken.
Fish were taken at weirs, by floating nets, seines,
dip nets, and lines and hooks. Spearing of fish
was also practiced. Fish, fresh, dried, smoked,
salted, and soured (fermented), provided staple
food. Fish skin was a basic technological material
used for clothing and footwear, window and
skylight coverings (instead of window glass),
waterproof cargo covers on sleds and boats, and
various small items, such as pouches. Fish glue

23. Wood Box
Nivkhi: AMNH 70-870a,b
Laufer was interested primarily in
the art of the Amur region and pub¬
lished a slender volume on this sub¬
ject. As he never published a full eth¬
nographic report, little is known of
the functions and details of the ob¬
jects he collected. Laufer did note
that most of the decorated pieces he
obtained were from remote villages
and had long been in use. Losing
their ritual association, decorated ob¬
jects were being replaced by undeco¬
rated utifiarian pieces.

This storage box illustrates the
prominence of spiral motifs in Amur
art. Generally absent in the Eskimo
area, spirals are common in Aleut
material culture (fig. 75).

24. Nivkhi Woodworking
AMNH 70-871 (tray), 70-881 (drill)
Peoples of the Amur region were
masters of woodcraft art. Working
with a few simple tools, they made a
wide variety of wood artifacts, includ¬
ing boats, most of which were orna¬
mented with interlocking scrolls and
spirals cut into the surface in low
relief. Drills like the one illustrated
here, operated by two men with a
socket and bow cords, were used for
doweling wooden boats. Use of iron
nails in boats was ritually prohibited.
Nivkhi boats carried stylized repre¬
sentations of seabirds on their prows
(Black 1973; Shrenk 1899:251).

was an important product, used in production
of fishskin clothing and footwear and in boat
building, gluing birch-bark covers, for example.
The fishskin clothing, especially garments made
for festive occasions, such as wedding costumes,
or shaman's robes, in many colors, with complex
designs that have much in common with Chinese
and Manchu decorative arts, are outstanding
examples of the technological sophistication and
aesthetic achievement of the Amur peoples
(Shrenk 1883-1903; Laufer 1902).

For the riverine populations, land mammal
hunting was a subsidiary, though important,
enterprise, both in terms of economics and social
prestige. Others, such as the Udege, relied
primarily on hunting. Animals such as elk and
deer were hunted for meat. Small game and
game birds were also hunted for food. Sable,
marten, and raccoon were hunted for their furs,
for trade. Udege also took wild boars and wolves
and occasionally, in self-defense, tigers — a crea¬
ture not normally hunted but often conceptual¬
ized as a manifestation of the supernatural.
Bears, also associated with the supernatural,
were hunted by all groups. Bear hunting was a
high-prestige enterprise, accompanied by elab¬
orate ritual, especially among the Nivkhi. Cap¬
ture of live bears or bear cubs, to be reared in
the settlement and later ritually killed in the
course of the bear festival commemorating de¬
ceased ancestors, had an extremely great social
value among the Nivkhi and the Ainu. A man
could go against the bear alone or in a group.

Men hunted with bow and arrow and with a
spear. Spears and the bows were often elabo¬
rately worked and decorated, conferring prestige
on the owner. Some men owned powerful com¬
posite sinew-backed bows with baleen or horn
and silver insets, a conspicuous status marker.

In more recent times firearms came into wide
use. However, most animals were taken by traps.

Trap technology was most elaborate, ranging
from deadfalls, to nets, to nooses, to forked
sticks, to pit traps, and to "automats": crossbows
triggered when an animal disturbed a line. Udege
took deer and elk by means of fence traps
supplemented with pits dug or automats placed
at the openings in the fences.

Those people who occupied territories along
the shores of the Pacific Ocean hunted sea
mammals: bearded seal, seal, and, among the
Nivkhi, white whales. Sea mammals provided
an important source of food and technological
materials. They were also a trade item in the
intergroup barter.

Marine mammal hunting was a collective en¬
terprise. The animals were taken on shore, on
the ice, from boats, and on floating ice floes.
When hunting by boat, harpoons were used.
The Ulcha developed a unique weapon (de¬
scribed by A. V. Smoliak 1966:40-41), a kind of
floating harpoon, with a wooden "rudder” at¬
tached to the harpoon head and the rudder
affixed to a 100-foot-long rod, composed of six
to eight long poles. This harpoon could be
directed by an experienced hunter in any direc¬
tion he desired. It was also used to take from
shore sea mammals on floating ice. Clubbing of
animals hauled out on large ice floes was also
practiced. The sea mammal carcasses were di¬
vided among the hunting crew, but there were
variations in the rules for the division from group
to group.

The Nivkhi preferred open-sea hunting, which
commenced when the rituals directed at the
Master of the Waters (begun at the breaking up
of winter ice) were completed and the sea was
relatively free of ice. The owner of a large boat

25. Knife and Sheath
Nivkhi: MAE 36-162a,b
The Nivkhi were also known for their
excellent metalwork, which they
forged from iron, brass, copper, and
silver stock obtained from the Japa¬
nese and Chinese. According to
Shrenk, knowledge of metallurgy was
hereditary and privileged. Certain
towns specialized in the production of
metal implements, and its producers
became wealthy. This specimen is in¬
laid with lead, copper, and brass and
carries band and fishscale pattern de¬
signs. Its sheath is made of em¬
bossed sturgeon skin.

organized the crew and took care of the boat's
equipment and provisioning. Affines were as a
rule chosen for the crew, which had to consist
of strong oarsmen, a good helmsman, and a
good shot who took up his position in the bow.
During the hunt, all men (and their wives at
home) observed elaborate rituals and behavioral
prescriptions. All animals taken were ritually
treated before being dressed, such as being
"fed” with special grasses brought along for
that purpose.

Hunting the white whale (and rarely whales
of other species) was a special enterprise among
the Nivkhi. The animal, driven into shallow
water, was hunted with harpoons equipped with
floats, played out, then dispatched, ideally by a
single thrust of a spear to the breathing hole.
The carcass was then towed to the village, where
it was met by drumming on a wooden board by
an old woman. The boat bringing in the whale
was beached bow first — the opposite of the usual
practice. The head of the white whale was laid
on the board that had been used for drumming
the whale in. The carcass was "fed” and then
divided among the entire village. The eyes were
buried, together with certain ritual grasses, near
shore, near the village, at a place dedicated to
the Master of the Waters.

We can conclude this brief overview of the
material culture and subsistence activities of the
peoples of the Amur with the observation that
variations in microenvironment and ideological
orientation of the group resulted in significant
differences in the way people made their living
and in customs associated with subsistence ac¬
tivities.

The main organizing principle of the social
structure of the peoples of the Lower Amur was
the principle of agnatic kinship. An individual
was born into a named exogamous patrilineal
lineage or clan. Each named kin group was
associated with the lineage or clan fire (which
only males could handle, with the oldest male
of the lineage guarding the clan fire-making
apparatus used in religious ceremonies), cloth¬
ing, and other symbols of clan unity. Among the
Nivkhi, and apparently in the past also among
the Tungusic-speaking peoples of this region,
there were prescriptive rules of marriage, which
specified the clans from which a young man
could take a spouse. Among the Nivkhi, a clearly
articulated rule prescribed marriage with moth¬
er's brother's daughter; that is, a man always
took a bride from a lineage from which his
father's, paternal grandfather's, and uncles' wives
came. This resulted in a permanent alliance of
lineages bound by the ties of affinity. Among
the Tungusic-speaking peoples of this area, there
were permanent alliances of clans (sometimes

called phratry, or locally, dokha). Marriage be¬
tween clans of a dokha was not permitted. It is
not clear if the dokha was analogous to the
moiety organization known from the Northwest
Coast of America and from South America.
Among the Ulcha, the dual division by residence
on the right and left riverbank developed, but it
may not coincide with clan and dokha member¬
ship.

Marriages were polygynous, and a household
consisted of an extended family; that is, of an
older male, his spouses and children, his younger
brothers and their spouses and children, and
their sons with their spouses and children. The
levirate was practiced by all groups — that is,
when a man died, his lineage "brothers'' took
on his widows as wives and adopted the children.
A form of avunculate existed; the mother's
brother or, as among the Ulcha, mother's father's
brother was responsible for training of the boys
in all essential skills, specifically hunting and
fishing skills. At the boy's wedding, this uncle
presented the young man with a gift of an
ornamented bow and spear and addressed the
young couple with a stylized oration on their
duties and proper conduct in life.

A young man's kinsmen offered bridewealth
to the bride's family; the bride, in turn, brought
to her new family a dowry. Only the poor men
performed bride service for their bride's parents
in her village. In exceptional circumstances, such
a poor man could join the residential unit of his
wife. Normally, the bride moved into her hus¬
band's father's house. She was subject to su¬
pervision and often control by her mother-in-
law, and in the case of the junior wife, by the
senior wives, unless the latter were childless or
had no sons. Although the women had relative
freedom, their lot was not always easy, and
protest suicide by young women was not infre¬
quent.

Among the Nivkhi, members of a lineage and,
among the Tungusic-speaking peoples, mem¬
bers of the dokha or clan alliance were respon¬
sible for joining in retaliation for injury done to
any of the kin-group members. Feuds persisted
for several generations. However, mediation was
possible and was frequently resorted to. Among
some of the Tungusic-speaking groups there
were formal interclan courts; among others, as
among the Nivkhi, well-known mediators were
called to negotiate the case, with the injured
party receiving recompense for losses suffered.

The clans and lineages were associated, in
ideology, with territory, and each clan or lineage
had its own hunting and fishing grounds, the
title validated by use. This was reflected in the
clan and lineage names, which were derived
from localities historically occupied by the given

26. Bear Festival Bowl
Nivkhi: MAE 5536-165
Bear ceremonialism was an important
feature in the ritual life of many Si¬
berian peoples, and was particularly
strong in the Amur region. Similar in
many ways to Northwest Coast pot-
latches, Amur bear ceremonies were
performed in honor of a deceased line¬
age member and took several years
to prepare for. First a bear was cap¬
tured and reared — using long-han¬
dled spoons — within the lineage
house. After its sacrifice, the bear
was eaten by the assembled guests
with specially prepared utensils.

Symbolic designs on this bowl in¬
clude representation of the flight of a
bear spirit whose tracks and trail are
shown as gouges and grooves on the
left handle; notches, spirals, and cut¬
outs decorate the other.

27. Festival Spoon and Amulet

Nivkhi: ANMH 70-891, 70-1205
Ornamented spoons made by desig¬
nated specialists were used in ritual
observances prior to the bear festival.
These spoons were carved with rep¬
resentations of bears, sun, and moon,
linked by spiral bands. The spoon il¬
lustrated here has two bear cubs at
its end — a reference to the capture
and rearing of a particular set of ani¬
mals. Other spoons in the set portray
other events in a bear festival. The
bowl of the spoon is decorated with a
sun and a swastika-like image of un¬
known meaning.

The small bearlike amulet repre¬
sents a class of evil spirits known as
mil'k that often appear in the guise
of lizards, frogs, and toads.

group. In reality, the settlements were multi¬
lineage ones, and residential ties were often
stressed in actual situations, such as recruitment
of hunting crews for big land or marine game.

The clan structure was emphasized in religious
rituals. The belief and ritual systems of all the
Amur peoples were complex and, in recent
historic times, syncretic. In the 19th century,
most of the Amur groups were officially Ortho¬
dox Christians, but shamanism and the complex
of beliefs associated with the environment —
such as Master of the Mountain/Forest and Mas¬
ter of the Waters, belief in the material form of
animals and their essence, conceptualized as
anthropomorphic — persisted. Among many of
the Tungusic-speaking peoples, especially the
Nanai, Oroch, and Udege, the tiger was espe¬
cially revered. The bear, among all the Amur
peoples, like the tiger, was associated with
males. The bear was subject to numerous ritual
observances, but some groups, the Nanai for
example, had no bear festival, so characteristic
an observance among the Nivkhi and the Ainu.

Among the latter, the bear symbolized si¬
multaneously the unity of agnates from gener¬
ation to generation, the deceased ancestors who
have entered, after death, the lineage of the
Master of the Mountain/Forest, and the Master
of the Mountain/Forest himself, who provided
the abundance of land animals. As do all focal

symbols, the bear communicated many mean¬
ings, depending on the context in which the
symbol was used.

The bear, seen in many aspects as human¬
like, was subject to ambivalent attitudes: mainly,
he was seen as a stand-in for benevolent super-
naturals, but sometimes also as a dangerous and
at times a vindictive and harmful one. Conse¬
quently, rituals associated with the bear image
could be eucharistic, as were the Nivkhi and
Ainu bear festivals, or when individuals invoked
the bear's aid against illness or for assistance
with fishing, as among the Nanai, or apotropaic,
when the aid of the shamans was needed for
protection against malevolent powers loosed
against an individual by the bear. A great num¬
ber of amulets, therefore, represent stylized
images of bears, but it is seldom possible to
know if their function was eucharistic or apotro¬
paic and which concepts associated with the
bear image these figurines represented (Ivanov
1937).

The bear, like the tiger in Nanai ideology,
could transform himself into a human form and
enter into sexual relations with humans. Among
the Nivkhi, one of a pair of twins was believed
to be a bear-child. Among the Ainu of Sakhalin,
the bear was considered the supernatural ances¬
tor of certain lineages, and according to an early
ethnographer of the Nanai and Oroch (Lopatin

1922, 1925), similar beliefs were found among
the latter groups. Arsen'ev (1926) reported anal¬
ogous beliefs among the Udege. Among the
Nanai, the bear was one of the most powerful,
if not the most powerful, spirit-helper of the
shamans. Among the Nivkhi, shamans were
barred from participation in the bear festival.
Nevertheless bear talismans are found among
the shamans' paraphernalia, and bears are pic¬
tured on the covers of the shamans' drums; but
the shaman costume, among all peoples of the
Lower Amur, does not have bear pendants.

It was mentioned above that among the Nivkhi
the bear could represent the Master of the
Mountain/Forest who sends to the Nivkhi all the
land animals they use. Among the Tungusic-
speaking peoples, the Master of the Mountain/
Forest sends them only bears. Clearly, the con¬
ceptualization of the bear as a supernatural
varied between the Tungusic-speaking groups
of the Lower Amur and among the older popu¬
lations of this area, the Nivkhi and the Ainu. The
bear rituals among the Tungusic-speaking peo¬
ples were hunting rituals. Among the Nivkhi and
the Ainu, the bear ritual was a clan or lineage
festival in which the unity of ancestors and
descendants was reaffirmed and the kinship links
through males stressed. The festivals were given
by the agnatic lineage and attended by members
of other lineages tied to the feast givers by
affinity. Among the Nivkhi, it was the affinal
male relatives who killed the bear by bow and
arrows at the ritual killing ground. It was a
festival celebrating the unity of the male kins¬
men, both the agnates and the affinally linked
ones. Women, among the Nivkhi, had a subor¬
dinate role in the festival; they danced a bear
dance, though, and drummed the bear in, and
when the bear, before being ritually slaughtered,
was led through the settlement from house to
house, women, like men, dressed in festive
clothing, formed part of the crowd that escorted
the animal. Among the Ainu, women's partici¬
pation in the bear festival was somewhat greater;
particularly, they lamented the coming sacrifice
of the animal they had raised from a cub. They
were, however, absent from the act of killing
the bear.

The bear festivals of the Nivkhi and Ainu were
of two kinds; scheduled ones, given in winter,
when bears either reared or kept in captivity for
some time were ritually killed; and occasional
ones, when a bear had been killed by the hunters.
The latter were much less elaborate than the
regularly scheduled winter festival.

To sum up, the ritual and belief systems of
the peoples of the Lower Amur combine ele¬
ments of ancestor veneration and abundance
rites directed to the forces of nature (defined by

their complex cosmology into the forces of the
above and the below, the land and the sea or
water).

Among the Tungusic-speaking peoples the
unity of the above and below, the heavens and
waters, is symbolized by the image of the spider-
woman. In these beliefs the aid of benevolent
ancestors is also invoked.

The protective rituals directed against malev¬
olent spirits (symbolized among the Nivkhi by
insects) were performed by the shamans. Sha-
manistic rites included curing, divination, rituals
averting misfortune or restoring harmony (fol¬
lowing a disaster or unhappy experience), and
many others. A shaman could also invoke the
aid of malignant spirits to inflict misfortune on
an enemy.

Among all groups, mortuary rituals were char¬
acterized by complexity. Death demanded spe¬
cial rituals and clothes. Among the Nivkhi, the
manner of death determined the destination and
fate of the soul in the afterworld. Therefore,
funeral rites differed for those who died of old
age, illness, by drowning, in war or by violence,
or for those who were killed by bears, and so
on.

In the course of history, Chinese and Manchu
(and Korean) and eventually Orthodox Christian
influences were very important, and many im¬
ported notions were incorporated by all groups
into their worldview and ritual practices. The
clothing of the Amur peoples' shamans closely
resembled those of the Manchu shamans. Nanai
celebrated the Chinese New Year, incorporated
aspects of some Chinese cults, and used Chinese
icons, so that some of the shaman's spirit images
look conspicuously like Buddhist pictures on
fabric (Levin and Potapov 1964:714). Shamanism
and membership in the Orthodox Church were
often perceived as compatible. It is not clear if
any revitalization cults emerged in this area, but
the reported appearance among the Tungusic
speakers of an interclan cult focused on an
interclan deity (Kheri Mapa) in the beginning of
the 20th century points in that direction (Levin
and Potapov 1964:714).

After the commencement of the Soviet recon¬
struction in 1924, the traditional life of the
peoples of the Amur underwent rapid and fun¬
damental changes. Their economy is now based
on collective farm organization, from agricultural
collectives among the Nanai to hunting collec¬
tives among the Nivkhi, and fishing and reindeer-
breeding collectives elsewhere. A significant
portion of the population has been integrated
into the wage labor economy of the overarching
society. There was a significant shift of the
population from traditional small ethnic or clan
settlements to larger cities and towns and to

multiethnic settlements focused on state-sup-
ported economic enterprises. The trend is to¬
ward assimilation into the larger society, though
ethnic identity is still expressed specifically
through local, ethnic arts that are marketed
through state-supported cooperatives, wearing
of ethnic clothes on civil festival occasions, and
so on. The Nivkhi won the right to conduct the
winter bear festival, but under governmental
pressure the timing of it is supposed to coincide
with the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution
in November. The complex art of the people of
the Amur is widely publicized, and so is the

folklore, published in the Russian language and
translated into several European languages (Na-
giskin 1980).

Through education, employment, introduction
of modern medical care, the Soviet local gov¬
ernance pattern through the village council or
soviet, and through contact with the ever in¬
creasing number of permanent settlers from
other areas of the USSR, the traditional life of
the peoples of the Amur has undergone a dra¬
matic change, and the direction of this change
seems to lead toward eventual assimilation into
the mainstream society.

Koryak and Itelmen: Dwellers of the Smoking Coast

S. A. Arutiunov

28. Imported Technology

Koryak: AMNH 70/3655a,b (upper,
with sheath); 70/3441 (lower)

These knives were made by local Ko¬
ryak blacksmiths who had only re¬
cently begun to practice this art. The
large knife was the utilitarian side
arm of the region, having been for¬
merly used as a weapon of war. In
peacetime it served as an all-purpose
knife and hatchet for chopping wood
and frozen meat. Its handle is of
whalebone; its sealhide sheath was
worn across the shoulders. The de¬
signs on the blades came from Amur
River prototypes and are based on
opposed cocks, a Chinese emblem
passed to the Koryak through Evenk
(Tungus) hands. The design of the
handle on the small knife is a Yakut
motif that Jochelson was told repre¬
sented a stylized larch tree.

Two ethnic groups occupied the peninsula of
Kamchatka. The first section of this essay con¬
cerns the Koryak, who inhabit the northern
regions of Kamchatka and adjacent mainland;
and the second, the Itelmen, who dwell in the
southern part of the blade of the peninsula, near
the Ainu.

The Koryak, the Chukchi's closest southern
neighbors, did not display the latter's ethnic
homogeneity. The Reindeer Koryak, closest to
the Chukchi, represented almost half of the
Koryak population. "Koryak” is not a native
ethnonym but was created by the Russians from
the root kor, meaning "reindeer," originally as
korak, he "who owns reindeer.” The Koryak did
not have a global name for the ethnic group as
a whole. Reindeer Koryak called themselves
Chavchuv, in the same way that the Reindeer

Chukchi called themselves Chauchu, whereas
the Maritime Koryak called themselves Numulu,
"the village inhabitants.”

The Koryak consisted of eight territorial groups,
speaking morphologically and phonetically very
different dialects. Because of the mobility of the
Reindeer Koryak, their dialect was the lingua
franca and was chosen as the standard dialect
for the modern written language.

The Chavchuv Koryak practiced reindeer
herding on foot, like the Chukchi. Every year
the herd moved to the rich mountain pastures
for the summer. The nomadic camp was set by
a river rich in fish, since fishing was an important
resource, even for Reindeer Koryak.

The Aliutor Koryak, living in the Kamchatkan
isthmus, combined small-scale reindeer herding
with sea hunting and fishing. In the summer,
during the spawning season of the salmon, the
population migrated to the river mouths and left
the herd to young herders.

Maritime Koryak hunted seal on the ice with
dogsleds or in polynyas from kayaks and umiaks
similar to those of the Eskimo, but shorter and
wider. Besides kayaks and umiaks, dugout can¬
oes (bats) were used on rivers, and sometimes
two of them were joined as a catamaran and
used boldly on the open sea. Accounts from the
18th century describe how the Koryak hunted
small whales with these catamarans and umiaks
in the past, chasing the whale into a large net
of thong secured to the shore and then attacking
it with spears and harpoons.

Fishing played an important role among all
Koryak. Fish were caught, mainly, with fish traps
in weirs, but at the beginning of the spawning
run, when the weirs were not yet built, fish
were harpooned with a hooked harpoon, or
marik, known among the peoples of the Amur
and the Ainu under the same name, and with
hand nets. Fish was dried in large guantities for
both people and dogs, and also (mainly for dogs)
was fermented in pits.

The staple food for the Reindeer Koryak was
boiled reindeer meat. Marrow, kidneys, and
cartilage were eaten raw. As among the Chukchi,
Reindeer Koryak traded with Maritime Koryak
for sea mammal meat and fat and dried fish.
Fish was the staple food among the Maritime
Koryak, who ate it boiled in summer and dried
and fermented in winter. Fish heads, brain,
cartilage, and eyes were eaten raw. The favorite
food was seal and beluga meat and fat.

The Koryak ate a large quantity of vegetable
foods. Among the peoples of Northeast Siberia,
only the Itelmen surpassed them in this respect.
Roots of the wild lily, roots and sprouts of Carex.
leaves of wild Rumex, young sprouts of Epilo-
bium, and many others were eaten as an accom¬
paniment to fish and meat dishes. Empetrum
nigrum and Vaccinium uliginosum berries were
added to reindeer and seal meat together with
wild roots, as in American Indian pemmican.
The Vaccinium berry was the basis of a slightly
intoxicating beverage, but a strong intoxication,
leading to the shamanistic trance, was provoked
by chewing the mushroom Amanita muscaria,
also known as fly agaric.

Reindeer were the property of the family, and
so was reindeer meat. But seal meat and fat
were equally distributed between all the mem¬
bers of the village at the return of the hunters,
and only the seal skin remained the property of
the hunter who struck the seal.

Working tools like canoes and traps were
family property. They could be sold between
families. But large fishing nets were often col¬
lective property of related families.

As in the case of the Chukchi, there were no
clan divisions among the Koryak. But some
customs are considered remains of this division,
for example the prohibition against transferring
fire to a family of another kin, certain kinds of
cooperation between related families, blood re¬
venge, and others.

There was, in Maritime Koryak settlements,
as in Eskimo settlements, and partly in Maritime
Chukchi settlements, a "keeper of the place,"
numelgenan in Koryak or nunalik in Yupik Es¬
kimo, who was also the keeper of traditions and
tales. He was always a direct descendant of the

29. Koryak Dancer
Dancing was an important part of
Koryak social and religious life, and
special costumes were created for
this purpose. This Koryak man is
seen dancing in a coat of tanned rein¬
deer skin ornamented with tassels
and embroidered designs. The spots
may represent stars. Tassels, celestial
bodies, and information given to
Jochelson suggest this garment may
have belonged to an Aliutor shaman.
Leggings and boots are decorated
with Venetian trade beads. AMNH
70-3892 (coat), -5185a, b (pants),
-5260a, b (boots)

30. Koryak Winter Villages
AMNH negs. 4123 (above), 4139
(right), Jesup Exp.

These two photographs of the Mari¬
time Koryak villages of Kuel (above)
and Big Itkana (right) were taken by
Jochelson in the spring of 1901.
Koryak houses were octagonal in plan
and were built partially underground
with log crib walls. In winter, en¬
trance was by ladder through a hole
in the center of the roof. A "storm
roof' in the form of an inverted cone
kept snow from covering the dwelling
and served as a storage area and
open-air workplace in good weather.
Side entrances were used in summer.
Storage structures were positioned
around the periphery of the dwell¬
ings. Three to five such houses con¬
stituted a typical Maritime Koryak
winter village.

founder of the village. The group, led by a
numelgenan, had a numelgen, a wooden rep¬
resentation of the totemic zoomorphic type,
which was worshiped. The places where the
spirits lived, such as rocks, waterfalls, remains
of ancient dwellings, were cult objects as well.
In addition, each family maintained a cord to
which were attached seated wooden figurines
representing the ancestors, each with a hole in
the place of the mouth so that they could be
"fed'' with fat during celebrations.

The Koryak myth cycle is comparable to that
of the Chukchi and Itelmen and very close to
Eskimo mythology. Heroes of the myths are
Raven and a series of half-human, half-beast

creatures, such as bear, wolf, and fox creatures,
and also people-roots, woman-grass, and others.
Each Koryak group had its own cycle of heroic
legends of warfare with their neighbors, al¬
though some of these were common to all
Koryak.

Practically the entire Koryak population lives
today in the Koryak Autonomous Territory. The
same ancient tribes contributing to the origins
of the Chukchi played a role in the ethnogenesis
of the Koryak, but in the case of the Koryak,
these were influenced by the maritime proto-
Eskaleut substratum of northern Kamchatka. The
spreading of the Even on the Okhotsk Sea coast
reduced considerably the territory of the Mari-

Nivkhi suggest that at least some of the ancestors
of these groups were originally geographically
close to one another, most probably along the
Okhotsk coast, later occupied by the Koryak.
Numerous examples of Koryak ornamentation,
in particular on sewing reels, are reminiscent of
Nivkhi and Ainu style. It is useful to recall,
though, that until the 18th century the Ainu
population was partly settled in southern Kam¬
chatka as well and undoubtedly left its influence
on aspects of Koryak culture.

The primary inhabitants of southern Kam¬
chatka, however, were the Itelmen. The contem¬
porary Itelmen retained their language and eth¬
nic identity only in a few villages in the south
of the Koryak Autonomous Territory.

The Itelmen were once a large people, which
was almost completely assimilated in the 19th
century by the descendants of the Russian Cos¬
sacks and peasants who had settled in Kam¬
chatka in the 18th century. The result of this

31. Spinner

Koryak: AMNH 70-6303
This walrus ivory object is described
by Jochelson as a spinning game, but
no further details are provided. Four
faces decorate the spindle head; tin
tinklers are attached to the base; and
ratchet grooves ring the spinner hole.
Edward Nelson (1899: fig. 31) de¬
scribed similar, but undecorated, im¬
plements from St. Lawrence Island as
mechanical devices used to twist si¬
new thread. Perhaps Koryak women
learned to enliven their laborious task
with a game.

time Koryak and forced part of them to shift to
reindeer breeding. The part of the population of
Koryak reindeer herders who were former mar¬
itime people immediately came in conflict with
the Reindeer Chukchi, who set raids against
them and stole their herds, and captured pris¬
oners too, especially women. A reverse tendency
was observed among the Chukchi, where many
reindeer herders joined the maritime population
after they lost their animals.

The Koryak traditional territory encompasses
the land originally inhabited by proto-Eskaleut
tribes, before their migration to eastern Chu¬
kotka and Alaska, and the land along the Okhotsk
Sea coast bordering these ancient proto-Eskaleut
tribes and a population of Nivkhi, who occupied
then a much larger territory than today. It is
difficult to find the direct heritage of the Eskaleut
substratum in the contemporary Koryak culture,
although harpoon technology, the kayak, and
the sea hunting tradition in general were pos¬
sibly part of it. Other remains of this ancient
heritage can be found, for example, in the
clothing. The ethnic Koryak clothing did not
resemble that of the Eskimo, but the Koryak
funeral outfit, made out of white reindeer fur
with a "tail'' in the back, was similar to that of
ancient and ethnographic Eskimo clothing.

Nowadays, the Koryak culture zone lies be¬
tween Eskimo and Aleut territory on the one
hand and Ainu and Nivkhi territory on the other.
The distance between these is so great, even
on the Siberian scale, that the idea of common
ethnic origins may seem odd. However, many
features of mythology, belief, ritual, and social
structure linking the Eskimo and Aleut to the

assimilation was an ethnographic group of Rus¬
sians known as Kamchadal.

In the past, a variety of distinct Itelmen
dialects existed with three main subgroups,
northern, southern, and western. Only two di¬
alects of the western group, strongly influenced
by the Koryak language, survive to this day.
Although Itelmen language is classified as a
"northern paleoasiatic language,” like the Ko¬
ryak and Chukchi languages, linguists believe
there is no original relationship between Itelmen
and Koryak or Chukchi and that the elements
they hold in common are a result of mutual
contact and borrowing from each other.

32. Koryak Jewelry
(Clockwise from upper left) MAE
442-7/7, 442-7/5; AMNH 70-3684;
MAE 442-6/5

Koryak blacksmiths made ornaments
from iron, brass, and copper using
cold-working techniques. Unlike their
neighbors to the south and west,
Koryak women had not yet developed
a taste for silver, and even wealthy
reindeer breeders’ wives still pre¬
ferred baser metals and lively
sounds. These Maritime Koryak
bracelets have tin tinklers, whaletails,
and other ornaments attached. Ear¬
rings and a crescent pendant com¬
plete the set.

33. Pendants

Even: MAE 445-6/1 (left), 445-6/3
Even jewelery demonstrates more
refinement than seen among the
Koryak, who were at the fringe of
expanding metallurgical knowledge.
Brass, in particular, was more com¬
mon to the west, and these Even
pendants, called "throat medals" and
believed to ward off colds, follow
styles popular among Yakut and Tun-
gus groups. Together with the profu¬
sion of beaded decoration on Even
clothing, they indicate the social at¬
traction of new technologies that
were spreading into Northeastern
Siberia.

The fundamental source of information on the
ethnography of the Itelmen of the 18th century
was written by Stepan Krasheninnikov, who
participated in the Second Kamchatka Expedition
under Vitus Bering between 1737 and 1742
(Krasheninnikov 1972).

As far as subsistence is concerned, the Itelmen
were first of all fishermen, using hooks and nets
of nettle fiber. During the spawning season they
dried and fermented large amounts of fish,
primarily salmon. Fermented fish heads were
considered a delicacy. Land-animal and sea-
mammal hunting had little significance, but seals
and sea otters were occasionally caught. In
southern Kamchatka a mixed Ainu-Itelmen pop¬
ulation hunted whales with poisoned points like
the Aleut. Food gathering was much more de¬
veloped among the Itelmen than among any
other northeastern Siberian group. Roots of wild
lily and other roots, edible grass and leaves,
pine nuts, and others were collected in great

quantity. Dogsleds of a characteristic type were
the main means of winter transportation, and
dugout canoes (bats) and catamarans made of
sets of these boats, similar to those of the Koryak,
were used on rivers and on the sea.

Several Itelmen villages were organized on a
clan basis and were often in conflict with one
another.

The migration of the ancestors of the Itelmen
from the west of Kamchatka took place during
the Climatic Optimum, during the Siberian neo¬
lithic period, long before the ancestors of the
Chukchi and Koryak arrived, according to N. N.
Dikov, who also believes this may explain the
traditional importance of vegetable-gathering in
Itelmen culture.

Today, the Itelmen fish, hunt furbearers, breed
milk cattle and horses, and practice garden
agriculture. Economically and in their way of
life, the Itelmen are no different from their
neighbors, the Russian population of Kamchatka.

Even: Reindeer Herders of Eastern Siberia

S. A. Arutiunov

In prerevolutionary literature, and in most west¬
ern literature, the Even are known as Lamut.
The name ''Lamut'' was originally given to the
Even by the Yakut people, whereas "Even" is
an autonym, a name used to describe them¬
selves. In the Tungus languages, lamu means
"sea," in particular the Okhotsk Sea, and this is
probably the root of the name "Lamut."

The Even are closely related to the Evenk
group (formerly called Tungus), who are widely
spread in Siberia between the Ob and Amur
basin regions but separated from the Even by
the Yakut ethnic mass. The Even are mainly
settled on the northern coast of the Okhotsk Sea,
in the middle and southern part of the Indigirka
and Kolyma river basins, and in northern Kam¬
chatka. Their neighbors are the Yakut to the

west, the Yukaghir to the north, the Chukchi to
the northeast, and the Koryak to the east and
southeast.

In the 19th century, the Even were regarded
as a local group of Evenk. Seventeenth-century
sources, indeed, called the same groups indis¬
tinctly Lamut or Tungus. It is difficult to draw
the boundary between Evenk and Even clan and
tribal names. However, the Even language, de¬
spite dialect variations, is characterized by cer¬
tain features that differentiate it from the lan¬
guage of the Evenk, in particular the dropping
of the last vowel and consonant of the word.
The formation of the Even as a separate ethnic
entity probably is related to the absorption of a
large number of early Yukaghir, Koryak, and
possibly some local peoples by a group of north¬
eastern Evenk. The contemporary prominent
specialist on the Evenk, V. A. Tugolukov, be¬
lieves that the Even first originated around the
confluence of the Lena and Aldan rivers when
an ancient local Uralic population even older
than the Yukaghir shifted to a Tungus language.
Pushed by the arrival of the Yakut in the 13th
century, the eastern Even migrated to the north
and lost their ethnic identity by merging with
local groups to constitute the Nganasan and
Dolgan peoples.

The present ethnic boundaries of the Even
territory are fairly recent. The northern coast of
the Okhotsk Sea was still occupied by the Koryak
in the 18th century, and the Even settled in
Kamchatka only 150 years ago. The Even as an
ethnic entity were finally established during the
15th through 17th centuries in the basins of the
Indigirka and Kolyma rivers as a result of the
merging of the immigrant eastern Tungus ele¬
ment with the local Yukaghir substratum. Thus,
although the Even per se are a fairly recent
ethnic group, their cultural heritage encompass¬
es features of ancient Siberian groups.

Even culture and economy are based on rein¬
deer herding and hunting. The Even raised a
much smaller number of reindeer than the Chuk¬
chi and Koryak and valued them most of all as
means of transportation. Milking of reindeer was
known only to southwestern Even, who lived in
close contact with the Yakut. Lamut reindeer
were larger and much stronger than Chukchi
and Koryak reindeer. The Chukchi and Koryak
were eager to exchange two of their reindeer
for one Lamut reindeer. The sledge was rela¬
tively rare among the Even in the past, since it
had been borrowed guite recently either from
the Yakut or from the Koryak and Chukchi, and
existed only among Even having close contacts
with these groups. This type of reindeer breed¬
ing (i.e., initially exclusively for transportation,
for hunting expeditions, and also frequently as

34. Even Woman
The costume worn by this Even
woman was typical of the clothing
worn by both sexes. It consists of an
open, collarless coat, apron, moose-
hide leggings with boots attached,
cap, and gloves. The garments are
decorated with border designs of
Venetian beads and more traditional
dyed reindeer and moose hair em¬
broidery. A brass chest ornament
provides protection against illness.
The costume would not be complete
without the Chinese style tobacco
pipe and beaded pouch, for the Even
were renowned as avid tobacco
smokers. AMNH 70-5601a,c-h; 70-
5623a-c. MAE 445-6/3

35. Apron
Even: MAE 454-3
In cut and function, Even aprons
closely resemble European aprons.
Set within dyed reindeer skin bor¬
ders, a delicate geometric design has
been created in this garment by
weaving strips of dark skin through
slits in undyed skin, and by lines of
dyed reindeer hair embroidery
bounded by a blue and white beaded
border. Siberian reindeer hair em¬
broidery produced similar visual ef¬
fects to that seen in moosehair and
porcupine quill embroidery in New
World clothing decoration (fig. 298).

a lure for wild reindeer hunting) represents an
archaic stage of reindeer breeding, perhaps close
to the form of this complex when it originated.
Soviet scholars believe that reindeer breeding
originated around a.d. 0 among the Tungus-
speaking ancestors of the modern Even and
possibly also simultaneously among the South¬
ern Samoyed, their close neighbors, in the Sayan
Highlands region in the south and west of Lake
Baikal. Here the complex emerged as a result
of contact with the horse-breeding cultures of
the ancient Turks and Mongols of Central Asia
or, possibly, also with the last remains of Indo-
European cattle breeders and horse breeders of
Central Asia, the eastern Scythian or Massaget
of the Altai.

Having borrowed the horse from the latter
groups but experiencing difficulties with horses
in the tundra, the ancient Tungus tried to use
horse saddles on the domestic reindeer, which
they already had at the time but used only as
lures in hunting. The experience proved suc¬
cessful, and the saddle reindeer was born.

Milking of reindeer was practiced only by
reindeer breeders who lived in close contact
with peoples who were engaged in milk cattle
breeding, such as the Yakut. As far as large-
scale reindeer breeding is concerned (i.e., when
reindeer were raised mainly for meat and hides),
this was possible only in the large pastures of
the tundra and mixed-forest tundra and, in
general, did not begin in Northeastern Siberia
before the 17th and 18th centuries. Among the
Even, it was fully developed only at the end of
the 19th century and in the 20th century.

In the 19th century, even, the Even did not
slaughter their reindeer for meat under normal
conditions, since their herds were quite small
and represented too valuable an economic asset.
The basic source of subsistence was hunting
game: wild reindeer, fox, and mountain sheep.
Wild reindeer were taken by individual hunters
on skis with a dog or more often mounted on a
saddle reindeer. After contact with Russians,
the main source of cash income became the fur
trade, especially squirrel pelts. Hunting dogs of
the Even were highly valued in Kamchatka and
Chukotka, but they were not used in herding.
As among the Chukchi, dogs were tied up when
near the reindeer herd, since they would other¬
wise scare the herd or attack the animals. The
only case of dogs being used in herding was
when the herd entered an area where mush¬
rooms abounded. Such areas are common in
tundra and forest tundra, and the herders par¬
ticularly dislike them. Reindeer are so fond of
mushrooms that in searching for them, the
animals would spread out in every direction,
becoming completely dispersed. When this oc¬
curred, the herder tied the dog to a long leash
and made it bark, which scared the reindeer and
made them quickly gather together again. The
Even also fished in rivers and lakes, but not
significantly. Until the development of collective
cooperatives, fishing interfered with herding
activity. Fishing requires a long stay in an
appropriate spot, whereas herding is a nomadic
activity with constant moving. Therefore fishing
remained secondary for most of the Even and
became important only among the Even of the
Okhotsk Sea coast, who fished with nets made
of nettle fibers, fish spears, and hooks for dog
salmon when they ascended the adjacent rivers
to spawn.

Today, large-scale herding is still the main
activity of the Even, and fishing the main activity
of the Okhotsk Sea Even. These two enterprises
are financially very rewarding. However, many
families also rely on fur trade to provide cash
income.

The traditional dwellings, clothing, and uten¬
sils of the Even differ significantly from those of

the Chukchi and Koryak. At the same time, the
Even preserved archaic features characteristic
of the pedestrian (as opposed to reindeer-riding)
hunters of the taiga, which disappeared among
the Koryak and Chukchi who used the reindeer
sled as their predominant means of transporta¬
tion. Examples of these archaic features are the
opened coat with the breast piece and apron,
richly ornamented with beads, and the conical
dwelling known as the chum, similar in form to
the American tepee.

The Lamut had several types of dwellings.
The most ancient and simple one, the chum, or
diu in Even, similar to the Evenk chum, had a
conical structure covered with hides or birch
bark. The chorama-diu was more complicated
(fig. 257). The structure of the chorama-diu was
erected in a circle with an even number (8, 10,
12, or 14) of bipods, each of which consisted of
a pair of 1 -meter-long poles. Horizontal beams
were placed on the tops of the bipods, forming
a circle on which the poles for the conical roof
were tied. The chorama-diu is a transitional form
between the chum and the iaranga, the typical
dwelling of the Koryak and Chukchi. The struc¬
ture was covered with processed reindeer hides.
The Okhotsk Sea Even also used fish skin. In the
18th century the semisedentary Maritime Even
lived in semisubterranean houses with an en¬
trance on the side or through the roof and, in
the summer, in dwellings made of larch bark.
The latter were of the same construction as the
chorama-diu, but since bark is not flexible, they
were octagonal rather than round. These dwell¬
ings had two entrances, one facing the east, one
facing the west. Wooden planks were used to
make a floor from one entrance to the other,
delimiting the central hearth from the lateral
sleeping areas, which were covered with skins.

Even households, utilizing common nomadic
pastures, hunting, and fishing grounds, were
united in a nomadic group. Each family looked
after the common herd in turn. In the summer,
some families traveled with the animals, while
the other part of the group caught fish and made
dried fish reserves, which were later distributed
to all members of the nomadic group. The Even
practiced ancient customs in distributing game,
more particularly a custom common to every
Tungus group, called nimat. The principle of
nimat is that neither the hunter who caught a
land animal nor his family could keep the game

for themselves. The hunter had to present the
game to another family of the camp, who dis¬
tributed the meat between the families, giving
to the hunter's family their own share. Nimat
was partly extended to sea game, birds, and, to
a certain extent, fur animals, despite the fact
that pelts were a trade item and played a role
as a standard of exchange. When two hunters
hunted together, the hunter killing the fur animal
had to give it to his partner, no matter how
valuable the pelt was. The obligation, of course,
was reciprocal. This custom was strictly ob¬
served in bear hunting. The man receiving the
bear as a nimat present organized a general
feast in which the bear was eaten. The meat of
the head and the front part of the body of the
bear was boiled and consumed exclusively by
men. The bones were disposed in anatomical
order on a platform, and the skull was tied to
the top of a tree.

Even folklore included genres such as tales,
realistic stories, songs, and riddles. The heroes
of the songs were animals and birds and ster¬
eotyped human characters, such as an old couple
quarreling, for example. Part of these tales
belongs to the Tungus oral traditions, and the
other part is closer to Chukchi and Koryak tales.
The Even liked to dance circle dances at festivals.
The only musical instrument used was the Jew's
harp.

Until the 20th century, the Even were divided
in exogamic patrilineal clans, some of obvious
Yukaghir origin, others of Koryak origin. The
members of one clan might be scattered over a
huge territory in various nomadic groups com¬
posed of members of several clans.

In conclusion, the Even are a relatively recent
ethnic formation who became distinct from the
Tungus only a few centuries ago. Local Even
groups experienced intensive ethnocultural con¬
tacts with Yakut, Yukaghir, Chukchi, and Koryak,
from whom they borrowed numerous cultural
features without losing their ethnic identity and
distinguishing characteristics. At the same time,
there is no doubt that very ancient pre-Yukaghir
elements from the Uralic linguistic branch, the
descendants of the neolithic inhabitants of north¬
east Asia, played as important a role in the
ethnic formation of the Even as they did in the
Tungus branch. This ancient heritage can still
be observed in the Even way of life nowadays.

36. Chukchi Woman and Child

This Chukchi woman wears the V-
necked, hoodless reindeer fur "com¬
bination suit", or khonba, that was
her principal garment, winter and
summer. Her tattoos protect her
against harmful spirits and sterility,
and her bracelet and beads reflect
contacts with Russian traders and
American whaling ships. The child's
combination suit is fitted with a moss
or hair diaper. AMNH: 70-7267a,b
(earrings). MAE: 256-17 (boots), 395-
11 (child's suit), 395-8b (woman's
suit).

Chukchi: Warriors and Traders of Chukotka

S. A. Arutiunov

Chukchi and Koryak are two very close groups.
Their languages are, to a certain extent, mutually
intelligible. There are more common features
between the cultures of the Reindeer Chukchi
and the Reindeer Koryak than between the
reindeer and maritime groups within one ethnic
group. The Chukchi call themselves Lugora Ve-
tlat, which means "the true people." They call
their neighbors, like all strangers in general,
tannit, literally "the alien," "those from another
tribe," except the Koryak, called lugitannit, "the
true alien." This is also, interestingly enough,
what the Koryak called the Chukchi. There are
no dialects in the Chukchi language, only slight
speech variations. These variations are not a
matter of phonetics or vocabulary but consist
exclusively of the degree of intensity of incor-
porative structures in the construction of the
sentence. But there are phonetic differences
between male and female pronunciations.

Practically all the Chukchi population is con¬
centrated in the Chukchi Autonomous Territory
in the Russian Republic, and only a small part
lives at the edge of the territory, in northeastern
Yakutiia and the northern part of the Kamchatka
Territory.

The Chukchi's neighbors are the Asian Eskimo
to the east, at the tip of the Chukchi Peninsula,
the Koryak to the south, the Even to the west
and southwest, and the Yakut and Yukaghir to
the far west. The Chuvantsy, formerly a subgroup
of the Yukaghir, are now practically assimilated
to Chukchi or Russian, depending on geographic
location. The history of contacts between the
Chukchi and Asian Eskimo is that of a slow but
steady assimilation of more Eskimo groups by
the Chukchi. This is still true today. A significant
number of Maritime Chukchi descended genet¬
ically from "Chukchified" Eskimo. Archeological
evidence suggests that around a.d. 0 the entire

coast of Chukotka, at least east of 170 degrees
longitude, was occupied by the Eskimo. But as
far as can be seen, the Chukotkan Eskimo, unlike
American Eskimo, never existed as an interior
caribou-hunting people. The interior regions of
Chukotka were probably occupied by hunters of
wild reindeer, the ancestors of the Chukchi and
Koryak, by at least 3,000 years ago.

Waldemar Jochelson developed a theory, based
on the study of numerous mythological themes
(more particularly the Raven cycle among the
North American Indians and the Koryak, Chuk¬
chi, and Itelmen), according to which there was
initially a continuous link between American
Indians, on one side, and the Chukchi, Koryak,
and Itelmen on the other. In this theory, which
was part of Boas's "Eskimo wedge" hypothesis,
the Eskimo settled in their present habitat later,
disturbing the former continuity of Asian-Amer-
ican coastal peoples. It is, as a matter of fact,
reasonable to consider that the Eskimo, or more
specifically the ancient Eskaleut, were consti¬
tuted as a group in the Bering Strait region, with
a considerable participation of tribes, migrating
from the south, from Kamchatka. It is also highly
probable that as a consequence of the consti¬
tution of the specific maritime culture of the
ancient Eskimo, the cultural links and influences
from Asia to America through the Bering Strait,
if they did not stop, at least diminished.

However, the ancestors of the Chukchi and
Koryak appeared in Chukotka after the Eskimo
settled there. The many similarities between the
Chukchi, Koryak, and Itelmen on the one hand
and American Indians on the other can be
explained otherwise. The ancestors of the Indi¬
ans, migrating from Asia to America, had no
reason, so to speak, to leave the Chukchi Pen¬
insula completely empty. On the contrary, only
a small portion of them migrated, and the most

significant part would have remained in place.
The early neolithic and mesolithic archeological
sites of Chukotka probably must be attributed
to them. The ancestors of the Itelmen, Chukchi,
and Koryak, migrating here from the west,
assimilated this local substratum and absorbed
many cultural features from them, which ex¬
plains the striking parallels between Asian and
American cultures. Ancient Eskimo were not
influenced by this substratum, because they
were settled exclusively on the shore.

The overall tendency of ethnic processes in
Northeast Asia has been the assimilation of the
coastal populations by the interior populations,
but not vice versa. The mobility and commun¬
icability of the tundra people played an important
role in this process, for the maritime settlements
were relatively isolated. Although the Chukchi

37. Chukchi Travelers
AMNH neg. 11111, Jesup Exp.
Waldemar Bogoras took this photo¬
graph of a Chukchi husband and wife
relaxing on their reindeer sled on a
cold day in Northeastern Siberia. The
woman is wearing her warm but
bulky one-piece combination suit and
fur boots. Scarf, braided pigtails, and
beaded earrings and necklace com¬
plete her outfit. Her husband is
dressed less traditionally, wearing a
cloth parka and scarf over fur cloth¬
ing. He holds a reindeer prod used to
guide the animals hitched to his sled.

were divided into two distinct groups, culturally
and economically, namely the maritime sea
hunters and the tundra reindeer herders, these
were not isolated from each other. Exchange of
products needed by both groups had been in
place long ago. These products were first of all
reindeer skins for clothing, for the bed curtain
( polog ), and for beds, traded from the Reindeer
Chukchi; and blubber, walrus and seal skins, and
sealskin thong from the Maritime Chukchi. There
was a constant population fluctuation between
the two groups by marriage. In some cases, sea
hunters shifted to reindeer breeding, but it was
more often the herders who had lost their

38. Pouch

Chukchi: MAE 1791-186
This sealskin pouch has a chevron
design made of alternating panels of
light and dark skin ornamented with
strips of applique, slit weaving, and
spurred triangular motifs, bordered
by alternating brown, tan, and green
panels. The pouch is typical of work
produced by Yukaghir in the Russian¬
ized settlements of the Anadyr and
Kolyma rivers at which the Reindeer
Chukchi trade.

39. "Tchouktchis and Their
Habitations"

Louis Choris. AMHA 81.68.9
This lithograph from Kotzebue's ex¬
pedition in 1816 shows a young fam¬
ily in their usual attire, the man ton¬
sured and carrying a quiver and
sinew-backed bow, wearing a hood¬
less parka belted at the waist; his
wife and child wear one-piece combi¬
nation suits. Over her suit, the
woman wears a "bibbed" parka.

reindeer who became sea hunters. A family,
who owned a small herd of about 100 animals
or less, practiced sea hunting as an auxiliary
means of subsistence. The further to the east,
the more significant and developed was the
maritime adaptation of the Chukchi, reaching its
peak in the Bering Strait region.

Chukchi reindeer herding was the most im¬
portant in scale, but also the most archaic. Before
Soviet jurisdiction was established, with its

40. Embroidered Summer Boots
Chukchi: MAE 611-79
Chukchi women, like Even women,
were known for their embroidery
skills. These lightweight women's
boots, made for summer use, have
waterproof bottoms made of bearded
seal hide and uppers of tanned and
dyed reindeer skin. A band of
bleached sealskin ornaments the boot
top. White reindeer hair embroidery,
following classic Chukchi patterns,
and a cutout frieze of bleached seal¬
skin, complete the design. Straps
were wrapped around the outside of
the boots for added support.

measures to improve herding, the animals were
the responsibility of pedestrian herders. Rein¬
deer sledges were used only as transportation
in everyday life. The Maritime Chukchi used
dogsleds for hunting trips. Pedestrian herders
had to run in the tundra after each reindeer that
left the herd. The level of domestication of the
Chukchi reindeer was minimal. Even the sled
reindeer had to be captured with a lasso, or
when attracted by the smell of reindeer urine
that every herder carried at his belt in a small
pouch. Regardless of the size of their herd,
Reindeer Chukchi traded with the Maritime
Chukchi, exchanging reindeer hides, primarily,
for sea mammal fat, which was used for heating,
lighting, and food, and for meat, thong, and
sealskins for summer clothing. Without this ex¬
change, Chukchi reindeer herding would have
been impossible.

The Maritime Chukchi economy also depended
on the reindeer skin trade in the historic period,
but before the establishment of the reindeer
economy, hides were provided by hunting wild
reindeer and polar bear. As far as the preherding
ancestors of the Chukchi are concerned, they
had little contact with the maritime sea hunters,

but of course, they were fewer than the present-
day Reindeer Chukchi, and they did not inhabit
the whole tundra but only those areas where
wild reindeer were plentiful. Even here, though,
judging by legends, they experienced famine
sometimes and had to hunt small rodents, such
as ground squirrels and lemmings, to survive.

The food of the Reindeer Chukchi consisted
mainly of reindeer meat, blood, intestine, and
also the contents of the stomach, rilkeil, com¬
posed of semidigested moss. After the massive
slaughter of reindeer in the fall, the large volume
of rilkeil was prepared for storage, pressed, and
frozen. Later it was boiled with blood, fat, and
pieces of intestine. The Maritime Chukchi, like
the Eskimo, prepared, and still prepare nowa¬
days, fermented walrus meat for the winter,
kept in meat caches.

The Reindeer Chukchi lived in iarangas, and
the Maritime Chukchi, until the mid- 19th cen¬
tury, in semisubterranean houses and later in
sedentary iarangas (fig. 258). The main means
of transportation was the sled with bentwood
suspension runners, pulled by reindeer among
the Reindeer Chukchi and by dogs among the
Maritime Chukchi. Until the mid-19th century,
the dogteam was harnessed in a fan shape, then,
under Russian influence, by pairs in a straight
long line, numbering between 6 and 12 dogs in
a team.

The Chukchi kayak and umiak were similar to
the Eskimo's.

The basic hunting and war weapon of the
Chukchi, like that of the Koryak and the Even,
was a complex bow, reinforced with sinew and

antler strips. Different types of arrowheads were
used for hunting wild reindeer, birds, and fur
animals and for warfare, the latter having a
heavy point that could pierce leather armor from
a short distance. Another important weapon was
a spear with a thick wooden shaft and a point
shaped like a massive knife. This weapon was
effective both on the battlefield and when en¬
countering a bear. The taiga hunters, the Even,
used it as a machete in the dense forest.

Fishing with hand nets, hooks, and nets on
poles had an auxiliary character, as did the
gathering of seaweed, shellfish, and wild tundra
plants. Bird hunting (partridges, geese, and ducks)
and gathering of bird eggs was more important
than fishing for the Chukchi people.

The clan type of social organization had be¬
come lost among the Chukchi. The Maritime
Chukchi social unit was the umiak crew. Men
from five or six related families normally formed
a crew, the owner of the umiak being usually

the helmsman. Sometimes not only relatives but
also neighbors of the owner's family were part
of the team. Among the Reindeer Chukchi, a
similar team was constituted by the members
of a nomadic camp, herding the animals to¬
gether. Patriarchal slavery, the relatively benev¬
olent practice of keeping slaves as auxiliary
members of a family group, existed in ancient
times among the Chukchi. Slaves usually origi¬
nated as war prisoners.

Chukchi folklore included myths, tales, life
stories, and heroic war legends. The heroes of
myths and tales were sea monsters, gigantic
predatory worms, human giants, werewolves,
six-legged bears, and others. Raven, bear, spi¬
der, fox, and wolverine were depicted humor¬
ously. The Chukchi had practically no riddles or
proverbs but many tongue twisters. The song
repertory was not very rich, but the Chukchi
knew a large variety of dances and pantomimes
and enjoyed mimicry.

Eskimos: Hunters of the Frozen Coasts

William W. Fitzhugh

Alaskan Eskimos are the most numerous and
most diverse of all Eskimo populations. Occu¬
pying the entire coast of Alaska with the excep¬
tion of the Aleutian Islands and Southeast Alaska,
Eskimos inhabit a wide variety of environments
ranging from the North Slope arctic tundras and
coasts to the Bering Sea lowlands and the moun¬
tainous, forested coasts of South Alaska. Eskimos
are known today under a variety of names,
"Eskimo” or "Inuit” in Alaska, "Inuit” in Canada,
and "Kalaadlit" in Greenland. The geographic
extent of their Alaskan territory covers thou¬
sands of miles of coastline. To the east, peoples
closely related to Alaskan Eskimos occupy the
vast expanse of the Canadian Arctic and Green¬
land, and to the west, across Bering Strait, they
inhabited coastal regions of Chukotka (fig. 1).
This distribution, more than 6,000 miles (as the
raven flies) across the top of the North American
continent, made Eskimos the most widespread
aboriginal population in the New World.

Throughout this huge region the unity of
Eskimo culture is enhanced by their possession
of similar languages, similar physical and genetic
characteristics, and, to a lesser extent, posses¬
sion of a common cultural base, the core of
which is adaptation to arctic and subarctic mar¬
itime environments. Technological, social, and
ritual practices surrounding the hunting of arctic

marine mammals are the foundation on which
most Eskimo cultures rest. For these reasons
Eskimo peoples on opposite sides of the North
American arctic find more in common with each
other than they do with immediately adjacent
Indian groups who are their closest inland neigh¬
bors.

A set of shared biological features distin¬
guishes Eskimo groups from Indians, Aleuts, and
Siberian natives. Genetically, the Eskimo phys¬
ical type is characterized by a relatively short,
muscular body. Facial features are generally
thought to be intermediate between those of
American Indians and the Asian Mongoloids.
Eskimo body type conforms to a general arctic
pattern, thought to be an adaptation to cold
climate, of flatter faces, shorter appendages, and
more compact physique than found among hu¬
mans in temperate and tropical regions. Genetic
studies involving blood types and skeletal and
dental morphology tend to confirm an Eskimo
biological identity distinct from and intermediate
between North American Indians and non-Es¬
kimo Asians, a finding that is consistent with
their geographic location between these two
population systems (Szathmary 1984).

In actuality, despite similarities, not one but
several regionally distinct Eskimo cultures and
languages can be identified in the Eskimo ter-

41. Eskimo Dancer
Unlike her more simply dressed
Chukchi counterpart, a Bering Sea
Eskimo woman took advantage of
Alaska's rich supply of furbearers to
make this fancy festival parka of
ground squirrel, wolf, wolverine, and
mink. Imported white Siberian rein¬
deer fur was used for accent. Fur
pants, tasseled boots, earrings, and
finger masks complete her costume.
NMNH: 38451 (maskettes), 38871
(boots), 56070 (earrings), 176105
(parka), T- 1611 (pants).

life that in themselves are not closely related to
environmental conditions or economic adapta¬
tions. Important shifts in mythology occur south
of Bering Strait, and many new traits relating to
women's and children's culture, like "house¬
wives” (sewing bags), sewing implements, and
children's story knives, appear.

This ethnolinguistic boundary located in east¬
ern Norton Sound separated four Inuit-speaking
North Alaskan Eskimo groups (North Coast, In¬
terior, Kotzebue, and Bering Strait groups) from
three more sharply divergent Yupik-speaking
groups south of Bering Strait. The latter included
Siberian (including St. Lawrence Island), Bering
Sea (including Nunivak Island), and Pacific (in¬
cluding Koniag and Chugach) Eskimo groups
occupying these diverse coasts. Hence, linguistic
and cultural evidence supports the western
homeland hypothesis, contrary to the beliefs of
Franz Boas and others who argued for Eskimo
origins in Canada.

Given such diversity, any ethnographic sketch,
even one limited to Alaskan Eskimo cultures, is
bound to be misleading. Therefore, rather than
discuss highlights of a composite culture, sep¬
arate sketches are presented for four regional
Alaskan and Siberian groups as they existed at
the time of European contact.

ritories of Siberia and North America. Eskimo
languages are part of a larger language system
known as Eskimo- Aleut (Woodbury 1984; Krauss,
this volume). Eskimo itself is composed of two
branches: Inuit, spoken from eastern Norton
Sound to Greenland and Labrador; and Yupik,
spoken from the shores of Chukotka to Prince
William Sound. Although Inuit consists of a single
dialect stream, Yupik has five branches, three
in Siberia and two in Alaska (fig. 1). The unity
of Inuit across the North American Arctic clearly
results from the eastward spread of Thule culture
from Bering Strait to Greenland about a.d. 1000.
This contrasts strongly with the diversity of
Eskimo-Aleut languages in the Western Arctic
and supports the notion of an Eskaleut linguistic
homeland in the Bering Sea region as originally
proposed by Sapir (1916). Modern linguists sug¬
gest a date of about 4,000 years ago for this
Aleut-Eskimo separation (fig. 177).

The contrast between Eastern and Western
Arctic languages extends to culture as well.
Cultural indicators of the Inuit- Yupik linguistic
boundary are evident in many sectors of cultural

North Alaskan Eskimo

The North Alaskan Eskimo (fig. 1) occupied the
areas of Alaska north of the forest boundary
from Norton Sound to the Canadian border.
Living in a variety of arctic and subarctic habitats,
the North Alaskan Eskimo were economically
diverse. North Coast and Bering Strait groups
specialized in hunting whales, walrus, seals, and
polar bears. Interior peoples such as the Nun-
amiut were primarily caribou hunters. Groups
around Kotzebue had a more diverse economy
utilizing fish, sea mammals, and land game. The
largest Eskimo population resided in the Kotze¬
bue area and the smallest on the North Slope
interior. However, the largest villages were at
the north coast whaling sites where marine
mammal, fish, and caribou resources were all
available.

North Alaskan Eskimo settlements were con¬
centrated at spits and coastal prominences where
marine mammal hunting could be conducted
over the ice during winter and by umiak and
kayak during the brief open-water season from
May to September. Villages consisted of clusters
of semisubterranean earth and sod houses (fig.
247) with driftwood or whalebone framing and
frequently had populations of several hundred
individuals. In addition to dwellings and elevated
caches (used to keep food from dogs and mar¬
auding wolverines and bears), meat-drying racks,
and boat racks, each village had one or more
men's houses, known as karigi, also used for
village ceremonies and festivals. Such men's
houses were used by all Eskimo groups in Alaska
and to a lesser extent in Canada. They were
completely absent, however, in Siberia.

The seasonal round of North Alaskan Eskimo
began with the loosening of sea ice in March
and the appearance in April and May of water-
fowl and anadromous fish. At this time migratory

seals, walrus, and whales began moving north
along the shore lead, where they fell prey to
hunters using darts and harpoons with float gear
both from the ice edge and from boats. As in
other Eskimo cultures, two types of boats were
used, both constructed of sea mammal skins
sewn over wooden frames. North Alaskan kayaks
were made for single paddlers using double-
bladed paddles. Kayaks were suitable for hunting
seals and occasionally were used on rivers and
lakes for hunting birds and caribou at water
crossings. However, because walrus was a more
common quarry than seal, large open boats
called umiaks were more frequently used by
North Alaskan hunters. During the open-water
season, umiaks were the dominant form of
transport in coastal North Alaska and Bering
Strait, used for hunting, trade, warfare, and
village movements.

In summer, birds, fish, and sea mammals
were the major sources of food, with seal and
walrus predominant. Birds were taken with mul¬
tiple-pronged and blunt-tipped arrows, snares,
and bolas. Fish were speared with leisters at
stone weirs and were caught with nets and
hooks. Harpoon darts were used to catch seals.
Fall brought new bird migrations, and a major
caribou hunt was conducted to acquire meat and
skins for winter food and clothing. Methods for
hunting caribou included bow and arrow stalking
and communal drives with snares and corrals.

Freeze-up was a quiet period in which people
lived off stored food and waited for the sea ice
to become firm so that men could move about
by foot and dogsled. The early winter months
of near total darkness were spent largely indoors,
preparing new clothes and holding festivals and
ceremonies. As light returned, sealing and polar
bear hunting improved, the latter conducted
with spears and dogs. In late winter, ice fishing
improved, and seals were netted under the ice.
Caribou, grizzly bear, and mountain sheep were
also hunted, but men had to be careful to wear
snow goggles to protect their eyes from snow
blindness.

Despite the seemingly large number of re¬
sources, life in North Alaska was often unpre¬
dictable, and survival could be insured only by
successful walrus and whale hunts, with caribou,
fish, and birds as important supplements.

Whale meat was especially important for dog
food, for without dogs winter hunting, fetching
of cached meat, and trade were impossible.
Whale meat and blubber also provided the means
for early winter festival life when hunting was
difficult.

Among northern Eskimos, caribou was the
primary material used for winter clothing be¬
cause the hollow hairs of this animal are one of

42. Baleen Basket

North Alaskan Eskimo: NMNH

372667

The first baleen basket was made at
Barrow, Alaska, about 1915 (Lee
1983), after the end of the whaling
era. This event resulted from a re¬
quest by Charles Brower, an Ameri¬
can whaler and trader, to Kinguktuk,
a local Barrow man, to make a baleen
copy of a willowroot basket. The re¬
sult was so popular that baleen bas¬
kets soon became a North Alaskan
trademark and a favorite item in the
tourist trade. Baleen baskets are
made with a single rod core and have
ivory finials ornamented, generally,
with arctic animals. This basket has a
whale tail finial and a fossil ivory
starter disc on its bottom.

nature's best insulators. In many areas of Alaska
Eskimos wore parkas or frocks made from bird-
skin, of goose, duck, dovekie, and cormorant,
which were nearly as warm as caribou, and far
lighter. Summer clothing was made from seal¬
skin, ground squirrel, or muskrat. Foul-weather
gear was produced from sea mammal intestines
on the coast, and in the interior, from the skins
of salmon or other large fish, as in parts of
Siberia.

North Alaskan social organization was rela¬
tively fluid, with status being determined by
hunting skill and ability to provide for community
security in terms of obtaining food resources,
protecting against outside attack, and maintain¬

ing social well-being. Shamans helped interpret
signs and performed seances and ceremonies to
protect against environmental disasters, disease,
and threats from invaders. Status was deter¬
mined by individual prowess and accomplish¬
ment rather than by hereditary or ascribed
means. Despite the flexibility of an egalitarian
social structure, powerful leaders, known as
umialiks, emerged from whaling activities, and
shamans, who might also be umialiks, controlled
village spiritual life and had a major impact on
community life. In addition, there existed mili¬
tary and trading leaders whose prestige was
related to their ability to deal with outsiders,
native and European.

43. Asian Eskimo Village, Plover Bay
AMNH neg. 127,519, Jesup Exp.
Waldemar Bogoras visited this Es¬
kimo settlement in Plover Bay during
his travels around the Chukchi Penin¬
sula in 1901. Skin as well as canvas
tents were in use at the time, both
being constructed in traditional fash¬
ion. Stormy conditions required the
use of boulders to hold tent flaps
down. Additional security was
achieved by hanging cables with
weighted ends over the top of the
tent. Inflated sealskins used for whal¬
ing floats and as food storage con¬
tainers dry at the tent peak.

Asiatic Eskimos

Asiatic Eskimos occupied the western side of
Bering Strait and St. Lawrence Island (Hughes
1984). Formerly numerous, their population was
undergoing reduction in the 18th and 19th
centuries due to disease and to conflict and
amalgamation resulting from Chukchi expansion
into the Chukotka Peninsula. Like the North
Alaskans, regional economic patterns existed,
but as a group Asiatic Eskimos specialized in
hunting whales, walrus, and seals.

Asiatic Eskimos lived in large semisedentary
clan-based villages along the coast and hunted
marine mammals in kayaks and umiaks as did
the North Alaskan Eskimos, with whom they
shared a similar way of life. Their sites contain
large numbers of gray and bowhead whalebones,
used both for house and cache construction and
apparently also for religious functions. Major
sites, such as Whale Alley, indicate the vitality
of this whale-hunting tradition and its strong
affinities with the traditions of North Alaskan
coast Eskimos, with whom they were in contact
across Bering Strait.

The economy of all groups of Asiatic Eskimo
was similar to that of the North Alaskan Eskimo,
except that the absence of significant amounts
of land hunting, especially of caribou, gave it a
stronger maritime specialization. Even fishing
was of lesser importance here than among the
North Alaskan Eskimo.

Until the 20th century, the Asiatic Eskimo
were divided into three groups with languages
that were mutually hardly intelligible: Chaplin-
ski, Sirenikski, and Naukanski (see pp. 146—47).
Even more important in Asiatic Eskimo social
life than linguistic differences, however, was the
division into kin groups, or nalku. This feature
of Asiatic Eskimo social organization is absent
in all Alaskan Eskimo groups. These clans, which
were patrilineal (i.e., membership passed through
the father's line), controlled rights to resources,
residence areas in villages, and even cemetery
plots. The oldest, most powerful clans controlled
the most convenient locations in a given com¬
munity and used separate burial grounds from
other clans. They controlled access to hunting
and fishing areas and determined the composi¬
tion of whaling crews, war parties, and trade
partnerships. Clan politics dominated commu¬
nity decisions, and the ancestral traditions and
legends of each clan were maintained separately
from those of other clans and were expressed
in distinctive rituals and beliefs.

Asiatic Eskimo housing differed from Alaskan
houses. Ancient forms were large, round semi¬
subterranean structures occupied by communal
families of given clans. In the late 19th century
the Chukchi winter tent known as the iaranga
was adopted. This aboveground structure had
stone, sod, and log walls with a domed skin roof.
The iaranga was divided internally by skin par¬
titions that set off individual family residences
known as pologs. Another departure from Alas¬
kan Eskimo tradition was the absence of the
kashim, the men's communal workplace, resi¬
dence, and community ceremonial center, which
for Alaskan groups was a central feature in their
social organization.

The Asiatic Eskimo in recent centuries lived
in close proximity to the Chukchi and intermar¬
ried with them. The population of some settle¬
ments, such as Kivak village, was constituted of
mixed Eskimo-Chukchi inhabitants. Since they
were in close contact with the people of St.
Lawrence Island and western Alaska, the Sibe¬
rian members of the Asiatic Eskimo family often
served as intermediaries in the trade between
Chukchi and Alaskan Eskimos.

Bering Sea Eskimo

South of Norton Sound lies the vast lowland of
the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, home of the Bering
Sea Eskimo who inhabit its coast, river courses,
and tundra to the head of the delta, and south
to the Alaska Peninsula. Bering Sea Eskimos
speak several Central Alaskan Yupik dialects.
They are also culturally diverse, with distinct
subgroups located in Norton Sound, Lower Yu¬
kon and Kuskokwim rivers, Nunivak Island, and
Bristol Bay, home of the little-known and now
extinct Aglegmiut Eskimo. Like the North Alas¬
kan Eskimo, Bering Sea Eskimo inhabited both
coastal and interior regions, but here the analogy
ends. Coastal groups hunted walrus, seal, and
beluga but did not engage in the hunting of
large whales, which did not visit this coast
because of its shallow, muddy waters, which,
however, teemed with herring, flounder, and
salmon. Interior groups derived their living from
fish and bird resources of the Yukon-Kuskokwim
Delta and from many land animals, including
caribou and grizzly bear, in addition to smaller
furbearers whose pelts were highly desired for
clothing and were traded north and south, and
even across Bering Strait.

One of the most distinctive aspects of Bering
Sea Eskimo culture is its complex art and its
wide variety of cultural forms. Whether meas¬
ured in terms of artifact types, design styles, or
religious festivals, Bering Sea peoples registered
a greater profusion of cultural forms than known
historically for other Eskimo groups. In part this
resulted from their relatively stable subsistence
base and occupation of a large geographic re¬
gion, including interior regions of the Yukon-
Kuskokwim Delta where fish and bird resources,
in addition to many types of land game, were
available. In some locations along the Lower
Yukon and Kuskokwim large permanent villages
developed in which semisubterranean winter
dwellings and summer plank houses occurred
side by side (fig. 249).

Bering Sea Eskimo implements were designed
to be pleasing to the animal and natural spirits
with which the implements would be associated
in use. Hence, ivory harpoon points were or-

44. Retrieval Hook

Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 175668
Made to please the spirits of sea
mammals, this ivory-pronged boat
hook has a spiritual "lifeline" consist¬
ing of a broad groove extending
down one side on the shaft and up
the other. Encircling grooves of this
type are common on Bering Sea Es¬
kimo implements and ceremonial
items.

45. Personal Ornamentation
Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 176232,
36859, 43720

Bering Sea Eskimos decorated
themselves with ivory earrings
(seals), pendants (jowly man), and
hair clasps ( tunghaks ?).

46. "Beautiful Things"

Bering Sea Eskimo: MAE 571-63
(wolf), 537-4a (box); NMNH 37120
(front spoon), 38635.

Yupik Eskimos of the Bering Sea
coast ornamented their belongings to
honor the souls, or inuas, of animals
and objects upon which they de¬
pended for survival. These tobacco
boxes depict spirits of husband
(smile) and wife (frown), and a devil¬
ish wolf whose red-painted mouth
opens to reveal the storage space.
Bone teeth, ivory ears, bristle orna¬
ment, and ivory eyes through which
blue beads shine complete the
masterpiece.

Similar care is given to serving
spoons. This set illustrates the myth¬
ological transformation between wolf
and killer whale.

namented with delicate designs in which the
circle-dot motif was usually prominent. Ivory
handles for ulus (the curved woman's knife
characteristic of Eskimo culture) and pail and
bag handles were frequently ornamented with
real and beastly animal effigies, and harpoon
and dart socket pieces were carved in the form
of helping spirits. Many of these carvings and
motifs continued artistic traditions rooted in Old
Bering Sea and Punuk cultures of the previous
2,000 years. Masking traditions and festival life
were equally elaborate. These and other features
have led scholars to identify Bering Sea Eskimo
cultures as the most artistic of the historic Eskimo
groups.

An interesting feature of Bering Sea Eskimo
culture is the importance of Raven in their
mythological beliefs. Raven stories, many of
which are similar to those found among North¬
west Coast Indians, have been cited as evidence
of contact with Pacific peoples. However, many
of the northern Inuit myths are missing along

the Bering Sea coast, especially the central
myths of Sedna, the sea goddess, and Loon,
seemingly the alternative to Raven as trickster-
operative. Traces of Sedna myths exist, how¬
ever, among Siberian Yupik. Also of note are
the many parallels found between Yupik culture
of the Lower Yukon and Kuskokwim and Ingalik
Indians upriver from them. These Ingalik adopted
many features of Yupik culture, including their
mythology, festival cycles, masking traditions,
houses, and many forms of material culture.
Contact between the two groups was frequent
and trade well established.

At the time of European contact Bering Sea
Eskimos were among the most isolated and most
traditional of all Eskimo groups. Because of their
occupation of the lowland coasts, which were
not frequented by whales or by whalers, their
life was being maintained largely as it had been
for generations, with limited contact with the
outside world. A further feature of their culture
was its distribution throughout a wide geo-

47. Ritual Hunting Headgear
Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 176207
Koniag Eskimo: MAE 593-16
Special headgear was worn by Es¬
kimo and Aleut sea mammal hunters.
Part of a costume worn to please the
spirits of the animals, these hats also
indicated a man's social status. Ar¬
cheological finds (fig. 136) indicate
that hunting hats of this type were
present in Bering Strait 2,000 years
ago.

The Bering Sea Eskimo visor is or¬
namented with ivory gull beaks and
walrus heads, crested by a clutch of
old-squaw feathers inserted in a loop
of magical grass. Red-painted
grooves encircle the visor and, by ex¬
tension, the hunter as well. Less hu¬

man and more birdlike, the hunter
thus enhanced his ability.

Ritual hats were more complex
among the Aleut and Pacific Eskimo.
This Koniag hat from Katmai is made
of thin, bent wood painted with
bands, dots, and squares. A beastly
mouth with red teeth and tongue is
painted over the brim, and whiskered
ivory ornaments with bird head cut¬
outs "wing" the sides. The rear of
the hat has drawings of a horned seal
and a fish monster. Little is known of
the sigificance of this iconography.

graphic region along the coast of southwest
Alaska and in the hinterlands of the Yukon-
Kuskokwim Delta, where large numbers of Es¬
kimo villages were found along the river courses
and the tundra lakes. These conditions provided
Bering Sea Eskimos with a population base
greater than that of the coastal-dwelling Eskimos
and larger and more stable than that of the
caribou-hunting Eskimos of the Alaskan North
Slope. Although large fish runs, migratory birds,
and a wide variety of marine and land mammals
provided the means for a secure life, these
resources were not particularly suited for inten¬

sified resource production, and even contact
with Russian fur traders between 1 820 and 1867
had relatively little effect in altering Bering Sea
Eskimo traditional economy and culture. Serious
European epidemics struck during this period,
but Bering Sea Eskimos continued to live a rich
festival life, using elaborate ceremonial masks
and manufacturing artfully designed implements
and weapons until the introduction of Christi¬
anity began in the 1880s. Even today, traditional
Yupik culture remains strong in Southwest Alaska,
and language retention is excellent.

Pacific Eskimo

Along the south coast of the Alaska Peninsula,
in Cook Inlet, in Prince William Sound, and on
Kodiak Island, was found the fourth distinct
group, the Pacific Eskimo. Today, these people
often prefer to be known as Aleut, and call their
language Alutiiq, emphasizing their historically
linked ancestry with Aleut peoples with whom
they have become associated as a result of
Russian colonial enterprises. Anthropologically,
Pacific Eskimo culture seems to have been de¬
rived from an early establishment of Yupik
Eskimo culture in South Alaska with subsequent
influence from Aleut and Northwest Coast Indian
groups. The South Alaska coast was one of the
most productive regions in the North Pacific,
with relatively mild climates, prodigious salmon

48. Beaded Dance Headdress
Koniag Eskimo: NMNH 90453
This fine beaded headdress was col¬
lected from Koniag Eskimo living at
Ugashik on the north side of the
Alaska Peninsula in 1883. Made of
sinew thread and glass beads, it
bespeaks of wealth amassed by suc¬
cessful Eskimos in an era when Euro¬
pean goods began to flood the North
Pacific coasts.

49. "Woman of Ykamoka Island (Ka¬
diak), Pameisinak, Baptised Anna"
Mikhail Tikhanov. RIPSA 2087
Mikhail Tikhanov, born a serf, was
appointed artist to Golovnin's around-
the-world voyage of 1817-19. The
illustration shows a woman from
Ukamok on Chirikov Island, in front
and side views, wearing a gutskin
garment and beaded dance head¬
dress. In 1823 the Russian Admiralty
decided it could wait no longer to
publish Golovnin's report, which had
been delayed by failure to arrange
for the engraving of 17 of Tikhanov' s
47 paintings. At publication, a notice
indicated the engravings "no doubt
will soon appear." The Tikhanov al¬
bum is now scheduled for publication
by Aurora Press in 1989, 166 years
later (Henry 1984:44; Shur and
Pierce 1976).

and other fish resources, and large stocks of
land game and avifauna.

More is known about the culture and people
of Kodiak Island, known as Koniag, and the
Chugach of Prince William Sound than about the
Eskimo groups of the Alaska Peninsula and Cook
Inlet, who shared these territories with Tanaina
Indian groups. Kodiak and Chugach groups shared
a similar environment. Here, whales, seals, sea
lions, sea otters, and fish, including many species
of salmon, cod, halibut, and herring, provided
the basic sustenance. Land game included grizzly
bear, elk, black bear, and caribou, the latter
three found only on the mainland. Plant foods
were widely used and were even more plentiful
than along the Bering Sea coast.

Occupying a mountainous coast with no sea
ice cover, Pacific Eskimo groups relied on water¬
craft almost exclusively for transportation. As
in northern Eskimo regions, both kayaks and
umiaks were used, but in reversed frequency
compared with northern regions. In the Pacific
regions, kayaks rather than umiaks were the
common mode of water transport, and kayak
technology developed to a highly refined art,
equivalent to that of the Aleut and the marvel
of exploring Europeans. A special adaptation in
kayak design was the addition of a second
paddler to provide stability and speed needed
for sea otter and other types of ocean hunting,
war, and use of the bow and arrow.

Pacific Eskimo subsistence combined forms
more typical of Bering Sea, Aleut, and Northwest
Coast regions. Whaling was conducted in the
Aleutian manner, from kayaks, using poisoned
spears with long slate points, and seals and sea
lions were hunted with both toggling and non¬
toggling harpoons. Sea otter hunting, the pre¬
dominant activity during the Russian period,
was done with bows and arrow harpoons and
with harpoon darts propelled by spear-throwers.
Birds were taken with the typical Eskimo tri-
pronged bird spear, also thrown with the spear-
thrower.

Kodiak Island settlements were among the
largest found anywhere in the circumpolar north,
rivaling and perhaps exceeding the size of North
Alaskan Eskimo villages. Located at prime salmon
rivers, or in locations were sea mammal hunting
and ocean fishing were productive, these villages
consisted of scores of semisubterranean earth
and log dwellings occupied by several closely
related families. Constructed in the manner of
northern Eskimo houses, these houses, known
in the historic period as barabaras, had a central
common room with a hearth surrounded by a
series of two to four small side rooms used by
individual families, some of which also contained
separate hearths for heat, light, and sweat bath-

50. "Happy Fellow"

Koniag Eskimo: MAE 571-6
This mask is one of a set used in a
"six act mystery" play witnessed by
I.G. Voznesenskii on Kodiak Island in
1842, cast as the "happy fellow"
(Lipshits 1955). A full rendition of
this performance based on Voznesen-
skii's extensive notes has yet to ap¬
pear. This mask, like many diverse
types used by Koniag people, shares
design features with Bering Sea Es¬
kimo masks, including use of hoops
and outstretched feathers and ban¬
gles, which in northern traditions
represented stars and heavens (Nel¬
son 1899:496). Similarities in facial
features, use of long-headed plank
masks, and bangles also link Koniag
masks with those of their Aleut
neighbors. Koniag theatrical perform¬
ances were similar to those per¬
formed by Northwest Coast Indians
at potlatch feasts.

ing. Communal cemeteries were not known, and
the dead were frequently buried outside the log
walls of the family houses. In addition, most
villages had one or more communal houses
(kashim or karigi in northern usage, and qasgiq
along the Bering Sea coast) in which the men
gathered to work and which was used for cer¬
emonies and festival activities. Dwelling struc¬
tures of the Chugach Eskimo are less well known
than those of the Koniags but appear to have
been plank structures similar to those of the
Tlingit, although of smaller size, a departure
from the Eskimo pattern that suggests contact
influence.

Pacific Eskimo clothing differed in significant
ways from that of Bering Sea and other northern
Eskimos, mainly in stylistic features rather than
in radical changes of materials. Because of the
milder climate, the heavy fur clothing of northern
regions was not necessary, and prevailing dress
emphasized protection against rain more than
cold. Kamleikas, full-length frocks made from
the intestines of seals, sea lions, and bears, were
worn commonly and were often richly orna¬
mented with hair, skin, and feather tassels and
colorful embroidery, the latter influenced by
Russian styles in the historic period. For more
formal occasions, frocks made from cormorant
skins, also richly decorated in the characteristic
Kodiak colors of red and black, were used. Since
this area was out of the heavy frost zone, footgear
was rudimentary or nonexistent, as were gloves.

By far the most striking personal equipment
was the elaborate headgear used by Kodiak
people. This included a variety of red and black
painted gutskin caps, ornamented ceremonial
headpieces made of beaded weasel skins, wom¬
ens' beaded dance headdresses (also found among
Bering Sea Yupiks), and several types of ritual
hunting hats. Among the latter are seal effigy
hats used for decoy hunting and elaborate painted
and ornamented bentwood hunting hats and
visors, which were among a man's most prized
possessions. As in the case of clothing and

hunting technology, these hats are closely tied
to Aleut traditions. Bentwood hunting hats, how¬
ever, are not known to have been common in
the Chugach area, where men more commonly
wore the spruce-root basketry hats typical of
Tlingit culture.

Ceremonial life of the Pacific Eskimo was
complex, embodying many elements of the Ber¬
ing Sea Eskimo festival cycle as well as elements
of Aleut culture, especially those relating to
whaling cults. In 1802, Gavriil I. Davydov ob¬
served festivals during his visit to Kodiak, as did
I. G. Voznesenskii in the early 1840s; the latter
also collected festival masks similar to those
traditionally used in Bristol Bay and along the
Bering Sea coast (fig. 437). On the other hand,
archeological finds dating from relatively recent
prehistoric times in the Shumagin Islands sug¬
gest contacts with Aleutian whaling ceremony
and art.

Thus in many respects Pacific Eskimo societies
may be seen as highly developed following a
trend of increasing complexity noted in Eskimo
cultures from the physically demanding condi¬
tions of the Arctic Ocean to the more socio-
politically demanding environment of the Pacific
coast. Compared to Bering Sea, Asiatic, and
Arctic Eskimo, Pacific Eskimo had higher popu¬
lation densities and more diverse and stable
economic resources, and they occupied a cul¬
turally diverse region where warfare, slave¬
taking, social ranking, and role specialization
were present to a greater degree than among
northern Eskimo groups. In this regard the
hierarchically ranked societies of the Pacific
Eskimo were an anomaly in the general pattern
of Eskimo culture, one which undoubtedly had
developed in response to the more advantageous
economic conditions of the Pacific coast region.
Under these conditions the Pacific Eskimo es¬
tablished a distinctive identity based on age-old
traditions blended with Aleut and Northwest
Coast attributes at the southern edge of the
Eskimo world.

51. Gunnelboard and Paddle

Koniag: NMNH 90420, MAE 593-93a
Koniag kayaks had gunnelboards fas¬
tened to their decks to keep weapons
from rolling off. This one is decorated
with a cormorant, killer whales, and
sea otters. The paddle illustrates a
land otter and thunderbird attached
to a dance rattle. Davydov (1977:108)
saw a similar paddle being used in a
hunting festival in 1802.

Aleut: Islanders of the North Pacific

Lydia T. Black and R. G. Liapunova

The Aleut, or Unangan, as they call themselves,
inhabit the Aleutian archipelago, a 1,300-mile-
long volcanic island arc extending from the
Alaska Peninsula west nearly to Kamchatka.
Traditionally, the Alaska Peninsula to the west
of Port Moller was also part of the Unangan
territory. In the 1 9th century, under the auspices
of the Russian American Company, Aleuts were
settled on the Pribilof Islands (USA) and the
Commander Islands (USSR). Today there are 1 1
Aleut villages in the USA, and a group of Aleuts
live on Bering Island in the USSR.

The term "Aleut” originally was a self-des¬
ignation of the inhabitants of the Near Islands,
the westernmost Unangan group, distinct from
other Aleuts culturally and linguistically. Today
it has become the preferred self-designation of
several Alaskan peoples: the Unangan (who
speak the Aleut langauge), Alutiiq-speaking Ko¬
diak Islanders (the Koniag), and the Chugach of

52. Aleut Hunter

Aleut men honored the sea mammal
spirits by wearing highly decorated
hunting costumes. This high-ranking
hunter or chief is dressed in a gut-
skin kamleika ornamented with col¬
ored yam, applique designs, and hair
embroidery. The large number of sea
lion whiskers on the hat indicates the
hunting ability of its owner. Large
glass beads, most of Chinese origin,
attest to his wealth and successful
trading ventures. In his hands are a
sea otter dart and throwing board.
MAE: 568-1 (throwing board), 593-
18 (kamleika), 2868-82 (hat). NMNH
175825 (dart)

Prince William Sound, as well as several Yupik-
speaking groups of the eastern Alaska Peninsula.
All of these groups came under intensive Russian
influence in the 18th century, and in the last
200 years their history followed the same or
very similar courses. Members of these groups
were considered citizens of the Russian Empire
with civil status equivalent to that of free peas¬
ants in metropolitan Russia.

In this essay, the focus is on the traditional
culture of the Unangan only, island dwellers
whose habitat is devoid of trees and, with the
exception of the easternmost islands, of terres¬
trial fauna. For this reason, the Aleut dependence
on the sea in the past was total. We shall stress
their environmental adaptations and material
culture. Readers interested in the Unangan's
rich spiritual life should consult specialized pub¬
lications by Black, Lands, Laughlin, Liapunova,
and Veniaminov in the bibliography.

Aleut settlements were, as a rule, located on
bays where there was a good gravel beach for
landing skin-covered watercraft. Village loca¬
tions on necks between two bays were preferred,
as such locations provided at least one protected
landing or launching site for any given wind
direction and served as an escape route in the
event of enemy attack. A good supply of fresh
water nearby was a necessity, and a good salmon
stream was indispensable; other considerations
were availability of driftwood and access to stone
materials suitable for tool- and weapon-making
and mineral paints, sea mammal hauling grounds,
and an elevated lookout post from which one
could watch for enemies and whales.

Associated with each permanent winter set¬
tlement was a fixed territory, trespass upon
which could lead to intervillage conflicts. Each
local population claimed more than one location
suitable for a permanent settlement. Should the
resources of one locality become depleted either
through overhunting or natural causes, such as
earthquake damage, the settlement could then
be shifted without conflict with neighbors. The
territory of each settlement also included burial
grounds.

Though two 19th-century Orthodox clergy¬
men, Father Ioann Veniaminov and Iakov Nets-
vetov, recorded Aleut traditions and ritual life
(Veniaminov 1984), we know little about Aleut
beliefs prior to Russian contact. However, their
burial practices suggest that they had a complex
cosmology, a belief in an afterlife, an elaborate
set of notions about death and relation between
the body and personal essence or "vital princi¬
ple,” and between the living and the dead.
Variation in the mortuary complex existed re¬
gionally and over time. Some differences in
burial practices were associated with the per¬

son's rank and, in some cases, with occupation
(particularly in the case of whalers), while others
related to the person's manner of death.

Sarcophagus burials (Weyer 1929). both in
stone and in wooden double coffinlike structures,
are known from the early contact period. The
use of double coffins persists to this day and
occurs in Orthodox burials. Prehistoric pit burials
have also been documented for southwest Um-
nak Island (Aigner and Veltre 1976). Pit and
cave burials associated with whalebones, and
corpses placed on or under whale scapulae, have
been reported from the Near Islands and from
Ship Rock, in Umnak Pass, in the eastern Aleu¬
tians. Mummified cave burials, with mummy
bundles disposed on platforms or suspended in
cradles, have been reported from Kagamil Island
in the Four Mountains Islands (Dali 1876; Hrdlicka
1945). Cave burials with corpses placed in rock
niches and clefts, reminiscent of cave burials on
Kodiak Island, have been found on Unga Island
in the Shumagin group (Dali 1876; Pinart 1875).
Cave burials associated with kayaks have been
reported from the central Aleutians.

In the overwhelming majority of known burials
the corpses are buried in flexed position, but
extended burials are reported from Kagamil and
from Unga. The Aleuts believed that contact
with the mummified bodies found in caves granted
special powers but that such contact was ex¬
tremely dangerous. Whalers, however, were
expected to engage in such contact and to use
substances from corpses on their weapons and
kayaks.

Early ethnographic data (Baranov in Khlebni¬
kov 1978; Veniaminov 1984) indicate that slaves
were sacrificed at burials of important persons.
Dismemberment of enemies and possibly of
criminals was also practiced (Laughlin 1980). In
protohistoric and early contact times in the
eastern Aleutians, members of a community
were buried in side chambers of a communal
dwelling, and slaves reportedly were buried in
rock shelters. The grave goods and the clothing
placed with the corpse depended on the rank of
the deceased. In a few instances, small bone or
ivory masks with no field of vision have been
found with burials.

The Aleut, like a majority of the peoples on
the shores of the Bering and Okhotsk seas, built
semisubterranean dwellings at their permanent
winter settlements (fig. 251). These dwellings
were entered through the roof by means of
notched logs, but their size and floor plans
differed from one island to the other. The dwell¬
ings of the Aleuts of the Near Islands were small,
housing a single household, with the exception
of the dwelling of the village leader or chief. His
house was larger because it functioned as a

communal gathering and ritual place, a kashim,
and also because he accommodated within it
some of his supporters. In the eastern Aleutians,
sometime before contact, small individual dwell¬
ings were replaced by large communal, multi¬
family dwellings. These longhouses varied in
size. In a large settlement there could be up to
six large longhouses, from 70 to over 200 feet
long and up to 30 feet wide. In ground plan
these dwellings were rectangular, oriented on
an east-west axis, but at the eastern and western
ends sometimes there were extensions running
north to south, so that a longhouse could assume
a horizontal I shape or look like one leg of a
swastika. A large longhouse might have as many
as ten rooftop entry hatches, which also served
for ventilation and to let in light.

Inside, the longhouse was divided into com¬
partments, occupied by separate households —
a head of the family, and his dependents. As
Aleuts practiced polygyny, it is assumed that
each wife may have had a separate compart¬
ment. Each compartment was marked by a post
on which was fixed an oil lamp, its rounded
bottom fitted into a hollow at the top of the post.
Twined grass mats separated one compartment
from another.

Aleut society was ranked, with hereditary
classes of high nobles, commoners, and slaves.
The leaders were recruited from the high nobles
or the chiefly elite. This ranking was reflected
in allocation of living space within the longhouse
and, as mentioned, in burials. The "east” and
the "above” were the sacred dimensions asso¬
ciated with the creator — Agugux. At dawn Aleut
men emerged on the rooftops of their houses
and faced the east to greet the day and "swallow
light.” The chief and his close kinsmen lived at
the east end of the longhouse. The chiefs retinue
was assigned space within the longhouse by
rank along the walls from east to west. A small
opening led from each compartment into a side
chamber used for storage, as sleeping quarters
for children, and for other uses. Occasionally,
side chambers had a separate entry hatch. Other
side chambers were designed as hiding holes to
be used during enemy attack, and some had
secret passages to the outside.

Dwellings (fig. 251) were constructed on dou¬
bled frames of upright posts that supported
crossbeams and rafters. Thin wood poles resting
on this framework formed the walls. Thick mats,
either of grass or skins, were placed over the
wooden framework, followed by a layer of old
grass, then a layer of new grass, and finally a
layer of sod. From a distance, these houses
appeared like grassy hummocks (fig. 16). When
available, whalebones were used in house con¬
struction.

Food supplies were stored on wooden shelves
spread with finely worked mats. Perpendicular
to the long walls, at each compartment's bound¬
ary, low shelves about 28 inches aboveground
served as seats and provided storage space
underneath. People slept on these platforms as
well as on the floor. Various racks and small
shelves held personal belongings. After the ap¬
pearance of Russians, doors and windows were
adopted, but finely worked sea mammal gut
remained in use instead of window glass. Wet
steam baths, introduced by the Russians, came
into widespread use and acquired a ritual puri¬
fication function.

53. "Oonalashka Native Codfishing"
H.W. Elliott. SI-NAA 7119-13. SI
neg. 73-10975

Aleuts were expert fishermen as well
as maritime hunters. This black-and-
white watercolor of an Aleut codfish-
erman is by Henry Wood Elliott, a
naturalist who participated in the
1864-66 Western Union Telegraph
Survey (p. 91). Elliott was one of the
first American scientists to work in
Alaska and an early conservationist
best known for his efforts to stem the
destruction of the Pribilof Island fur
seal population (Elliott 1881).

In the 19th century, the use of smaller, indi¬
vidual household dwellings became reestab¬
lished. A foreroom was added, and a Russian-
type interior stove for heating and cooking. In
larger centers, such as Unalaska, Russian-style
log and plank houses were used by more-affluent
people. By and large, however, the small semi¬
subterranean dwellings, though modified, con¬
tinued to be used in many communities until
World War II.

Summer dwellings were flimsy, makeshift
structures. In the Near Islands, caves provided
shelters in summer. When in transit, Aleuts
constructed shelter using their watercraft and
sea mammal hides.

The watercraft — framework boats covered with
sea mammal skins — were the most important
items in the Aleut technological inventory. The
larger boats, called baidaras, resembled the
Eskimo umiak. Baidaras, especially those from

54, Kayak Suction Pump
Aleut: NMNH 168569
The oceanic environment and long
crossings between islands required
Aleut paddlers to remain at sea for
Song periods, even for days. Under
these conditions removing bilge
water through the narrow cockpit
hole was impossible. Aleut paddlers
developed an ingenious mouth-
operated suction pump for this task.
Water was sucked into the hollowed
out tube and lifted over the side to
drain.

55. Aleut Man and Assemblage
Mikhail Levashev. UWL neg. 1771

The first pictorial representation pro¬
viding ethnographic details of Aleut
culture as drawn by Mikhail Lev¬
ashev at Unalaska in 1768-69. It il¬
lustrates a man, his clothing, and a
variety of knives, hunting, and war
items. Another illustration featured
an Aleut woman and her equipment.

the Andreanof Islands, were 35 to 42 feet long
at the keel. This craft was used to transport
people over long distances, on visits, to and
from summer fishing grounds, or when changing
the location of the village. Baidaras were also
used when chiefs visited their neighbors, on
trading voyages, and on military raids. Boat¬
making was a prestigious skill, and a man as¬
piring to be a leader was expected to be a master
boatmaker and possess at least one large bai-
dara.

Every able-bodied adult man had his own
baidarka (kayak). The village's strength was
often expressed in the number of kayaks avail¬
able. The Aleut kayak was a marvelously engi¬
neered craft, and Aleuts were famous for their
skill in making and handling it. The early Euro¬
pean mariners considered the Aleut kayak the
finest of all Alaskan kayaks. Regional differences
were expressed in their type and style. In the
Near Islands, single-, double-, and triple-hatch
kayaks were in use. In the Andreanofs and in
the eastern Aleutians, at contact, apparently
only single and double kayaks were used. The
eastern Aleut kayak was most distinctive of all:
narrow and built for speed. Its bifid bow was
distinctive, and a flexible three-piece keelson
made the craft especially seaworthy (Dyson
1986; Laughlin 1980). The Aleut used double-
bladed paddles, but a single-bladed paddle was
carried occasionally as a spare. A unique feature
was the drip skirt, a device that fitted over the
hatch and made the kayak watertight and, to¬
gether with the kamleika, the hunter's gutskin
shirt, protected the hunter from getting wet.
Sealskin floats for added buoyancy in case of
emergency and an ingenious mouth pump (fig.
54) were part of the standard equipment.

In stormy weather, Aleuts joined their kayaks
together to ride out storms. It is said that a
skilled kayaker could right himself if he over¬
turned. Though no kayaks are made now in the
Aleutians, and the skill of kayak-building is
believed to have been lost, the Aleut kayak
became the prototype for a popular sportscraft
now known worldwide.

Aleuts had a strict sexual division of labor.
Men worked wood, bone, and metal, while women
worked skins and fibers. A man's tool kit included
instruments for making baidara and baidarka
frames, among which were straight-edged knives,
crooked (sea mammal or beaver tooth) knives,
adzes, punching tools, awls, and polishing tools.
His weapon inventory was extensive, with each
piece suited for specific prey or conditions. The
most common weapons were harpoons or darts
thrown by means of a throwing board (fig. 193).
Harpoons and darts, usually painted red, were
constructed with detachable or fixed bone or
ivory heads (figs. 76 and 219). Toggling harpoon
heads were rare. Blades were of stone, slate, or
obsidian. Sea otter darts used drag shaft tech¬
nology, and harpoons used for larger prey uti¬
lized drag floats. Stabbing spears were used to
dispatch exhausted animals, and clubs for killing
sea mammals, such as sea otters or seals, on
shore.

Bird spears and fish spears were multipronged
and were similar to Eskimo weapons. In addition,
birds were taken by noose, trap, net, and bolas.
Fish were taken at weirs constructed in the
streams and by spears, arrows, and dip nets.
Deep-sea fish were taken by means of gorges
and composite hooks. A special hook was used
for halibut. Although deep-sea fishing was a
province of men, fishing in the streams was
often done by young boys and women under
supervision of one or two old men. After contact,
seining came into wide use and, in the 19th
century, gill-netting.

Seal decoys, made of whole inflated sealskins,
were used in hunting seals on land. Prior to
contact, fur seals were taken pelagically, but
after 1786 in the Pribilof and Commander is¬
lands, where the North Pacific fur seals haul out
to breed, they were harvested on land. Only
nonbreeding bachelors were taken after the
1820s.

At sea, Aleut men wore wooden hunting hats.
The shape of the headgear indicated a man's
rank; a short visor was worn by the young and
inexperienced hunters, an elongated visor by
the rank-and-file, and open-crown long-visored
hats by important mature men. Chiefs, and
probably whalehunters, wore the elaborate closed-
crown hunting helmet. This helmet was probably

adopted from the Koniag and spread to the
eastern Aleutians together with the Kodiak-type
whaling complex.

The compound sinew-backed bow was a
weapon of war reserved for human prey. Poi¬
soned lances were also used in warfare, as well
as war daggers and knives, preferably of metal.
Even before the arrival of Russians, Aleuts worked
metal, which they obtained from shipwrecks or
in trade from the Alaskan mainland, by cold-
hammering. The Russians introduced forging
techniques to the Aleuts as early as 1772. Slat
and rod armor was common (figs. 55, 306), and
shields (fig. 75), battle helmets, and special battle
kamleikas were also used.

Ivory and wood carving were much appreci¬
ated skills, and many men possessed ivory
carving equipment (fig. 458). Bone and ivory
items of religious significance were attached to
the kayak, to sealskin floats, to throwing boards,
and to hunting hats. It was believed that the sea
mammals — but especially sea otters, who were
considered to be transformed humans — were
attracted by human finery. For this reason men
dressed in elegant clothes when hunting sea
otter, and carried talismans and decorations.

Items of personal adornment were varied.
Labrets were worn by both men and women in
the eastern and central Aleutians, but in the
Near Islands, only the women wore labrets.
Ivory and bone nose pins were worn by men of
all groups. Women wore beaded skin bracelets
and anklets; men and women wore earrings,
mostly of beads; and puffin beaks adorned wom¬
en's dresses. In the Rat Islands and the central
Aleutians, men and women wore feather quills
as ear ornaments.

Household utensils were relatively few. Wooden
containers, carved and bentwood, were used for
water and urine storage and as serving dishes,
but because of the scarcity of wood in the
archipelago they were not as common or as
elaborate as on Kodiak and the Alaskan main¬
land. Large sea mammal stomachs ("bladders'')
had more widespread use as storage containers.
Air-dried fish, sea mammal oil, water, edible
roots, and berries were stored either in bladders
or grass baskets. Bladders were preferred for
carrying provisions and water when traveling.

Men's and women's small tools were kept in
special containers. At home wooden boxes were
used, but when traveling, men carried sea mam¬
mal gut pouches that were attached to a cord
that passed over the man's shoulder. Women
had "housewives” of skin and grass that were
elaborately decorated with gut-on-gut applique
and hair embroidery (figs. 88 and 252). Silk,
cotton, and wood came into use for decorative
embroidery soon after Russian contact.

Aleut men's clothing was made mostly of
puffin, murre, and cormorant skins. Cormorant
clothing (fig. 268) was especially prestigious.
Women's garments were of sea mammal skins —
sea otter in the west, sea otter and fur seals in
the east. Clothes were worn as a rule skin-side
out. The outsides of garments, especially those
used on festive and social occasions, were elab¬
orately decorated at neck, cuffs, and hem and
along the seams with embroidery of feathers,
human hair, and ocher-colored skin strips. After
contact, unraveled wool, dyed red or green, was
used as seam decoration. Parka yokes were
generally colored red. Festive garments, espe¬
cially lineage clothing worn at the annual winter
festival, were decorated with gut-on-gut appli¬
que and finished with an embroidery overlay of
caribou hair. Both men and women wore long,
ankle-length, straight shirts with high stand-up
collars and raglan-type sleeves. Outer garments
of sea mammal intestines, known as kamleikas,
were worn as protection against the wet.

Women made clothing, bedding, and most of
the household utensils, including containers of
birch bark, bundles of which were often placed
with females at burial. Women made their own
sinew thread and multistrand plaited sinew cor¬
dage, and men plaited heavy cordage of kelp.
Women were highly skilled at needlework, and
the waterproof decorated garments they pro¬
duced were traded by their men to the mainland
in exchange for caribou skins, caribou hair, iron,
and copper. After contact, these garments were
given as gifts or sold to visiting Europeans and
important Russian officials. Women made their
own needles, mostly from bird bone but also
from ivory. Needlecases of bone or ivory were
similar to those used in the Eskimo area.

57. Grass Basket
Aleut: NMNH 417767
Attuan women were renowned for
their clothlike basketry, producing
some of the finest baskets in the
world (14-15 stitches/cm). This cov¬
ered basket is typical of early Attuan
work, and features false embroidery
(sometimes called overlay) in red,
green, blue, and gold hues made
from natural dyes. Wild rye beach
grass (Elymus mollis) was the pre¬
ferred raw material. Grasswork was
an ancient craft in the treeless Aleu¬
tian region and was used for many
articles, including mats, mitts, socks,
and sewing kits. Baskets of this type,
however, have not been found in ar¬
cheological sites and seem to have
originated in Attu in the 19th century
(Black 1982: 164).

56. Gutskin Cape
Aleut: NMNH 2128
Rainproof gutskin coats were a basic
survival item in the wet Aleutian en¬
vironment. Russian mariners and
traders soon discovered the superior¬
ity of these lightweight garments and
commissioned them from Aleut seam¬
stresses, who altered the style to that
of the European greatcoat. When or¬
namented, these capes were ex¬
tremely valuable and were used as
presentation gifts to visiting captains
and dignitaries.

This cape, collected by the U.S. Ex¬
ploring Expedition under the leader¬
ship of Charles Wilkes around 1840,
exemplifies the finest of its type. It is
constructed of strips of sea lion intes¬
tine into which have been sewn tufts
of red and green wool and strands of
hair. Inserted into the seams in an
upward position, the hairs cascade
downward like miniature waterfalls.
Collar, cuffs, and borders are deco¬
rated with bands of dyed membrane
strip applique couched and embroi¬
dered with dazzlingly white caribou
hair, and ruffs of iridescent cormo¬
rant feathers (fig. 268). Gossimer,
waterproof, and regal, such capes
were the prize souvenir of high-rank¬
ing European visitors to the Aleutian
Islands.

58. Gutskin Hat
Aleut: MAE 571-79
In addition to their bentwood hats,
Aleuts wore a great variety of soft
hats. Made of gutskin ornamented
with tufts of dyed wool, this hat has
a complex design of applique panels
and concentric rings of dyed sea
mammal esophagus. As in the deco¬
ration on coats, a precise pattern gov¬
erns the sequence and position of
colored panels.

This hat was collected by Vozne-
senskii in the early 1840s from St.
George Island in the Pribilofs, where
an Aleut fur seal hunting colony had
been established by the Russians.

Ritual clothing was elaborate but is poorly
known. Ritual hats and belts were made of sea
mammal and bird (eagle and falcon skins, dec¬
orated with hair and feathers. Eastern Unangan
ritual hats were flat, with a central rosette in
gut applique on top. Hats from the central
Aleutians generally had an elaborate high, pro¬
truding frontal piece, which perhaps represented
a bird's head and neck. Elaborate costumes and
props were used in ritual dances. Dancing shawls
of gut are known from the Commander Islands.
All festivals were accompanied by drumming,
using the hand-held drum of Eskimo type.

Aleut masks differ in style from one region to
another and probably by function. The surviving
portraitlike masks from Tigal'da were used pos¬
sibly in winter commemorative feasts in which

ancestors were celebrated. Masks from the Shu-
magin Islands are powerful representations in¬
corporating both anthropomorphic and zoo-
morphic features and were probably used in
whaling ceremonies. These masks were thought
by Henry B. Collins to resemble masks of me¬
dieval Japan. The complex composite masks
from Atka in the central Aleutians remind one
of Shang China. Masks from Kagamil Island in
the Four Mountains are very different in char¬
acter and relate more closely to North Alaskan
Eskimo masks. Little is known of Aleut mask
function or iconography.

Aleut folklore is rich but not well known.
Several named classes of narrative and song
existed. The eastern Aleuts had several origin
stories, some probably historical in nature, oth¬
ers mythological. In one of these, a doglike
creature figured as the first ancestor. Raven,
widely distributed among other Alaskan groups,
appears only in the folklore of western Aleuts,
where he is a trickster, not a culture hero. Aleuts
believed that spirits were associated with all
aspects of their environment. There are indica¬
tions that the Aleut shared a belief widely
distributed among Alaskan Yupik Eskimo in the
Thunderbird (fig. 446), a powerful being likened
to an eagle who had the power to kill on land
and sea.

Illness was believed to be caused by evil
spirits, usually set loose by antisocial acts of the
sufferers or their kin. The Aleut shamans were
primarily healers. In this respect, they had much
in common with the Eskimo. The shamans also
foretold the future and controlled the weather.
The Aleut differed from the Eskimo, however,
in that they believed in a universal creator. The
creator was associated with the east and the
above, as already mentioned, and with the light
and life-giving water — a circumstance that made
their conversion to Orthodox Christianity ac¬
ceptable in their own terms of reference. This
symbolic overlap explains in part why Orthodoxy
today is the basis of Aleut community life and
the primary marker of their identity.

As this brief essay shows, the culture of the
Aleuts of Alaska was rich and varied and their
history complex. In spite of the limitations im¬
posed by their environment, Aleuts developed
the technology that enabled them to satisfy their
material needs. They also had an elaborate
spiritual and ceremonial life and an artistic
tradition that included embellishing each and
every item they used. In doing so, the Aleut
succeeded in creating objects that have a uni¬
versal aesthetic appeal and are now treasured
artistic masterpieces, especially their masks,
their carved ivories, and, above all, their splendid
ritual bentwood hunting helmets.

59. Tlingit Chief

Nobility and rank are prominently
displayed in the clothing and ac¬
coutrements of this Tlingit chief, who
is seen with his ceremonial staff as
he might look presiding at a potlatch.
His robe is a prestigious Chilkat blan¬
ket, woven from a combination of ce¬
dar bark and mountain goat wool. His
apron and leggings are of similar
make. His spruce-root hat, like his
robe, is ornamented with designs
portraying animal totems ("crests").
Outside contacts and trade are indi¬
cated by his abalone shell nose ring.
NMNH: 20633 (nosering), 88961b
(hat), 219504 (robe), 274433 (staff),
341202 (apron), 341202a, b (leg¬
gings)

People of the Wolf and Raven

Laguna

The Tlingit are the northernmost of the North¬
west Coast peoples who lived traditionally by
fishing and hunting marine animals and built
large plank houses, totem poles, and ocean¬
going dugout canoes. They were skillful traders
and utilized their excess wealth on luxuries given
away at splendid feasts (potlatches), which served
to honor the dead and to maintain or elevate
the rank of the aristocrats. The Tlingit comprised
four groups or tribes: Southern, Northern, Gulf
Coast, and Inland Tlingit. The latter are not
considered here, as their way of life is similar
to that of their Athapaskan neighbors in the
Yukon Territory.

Tlingit history has been one of movement and
mixing of peoples. Archeological evidence in¬
dicates an occupation of the islands and mainland
of southeastern Alaska for many centuries, even
millennia. According to linguists, the Tlingit
language may have split from common roots
with Athapaskan about 5,000 years ago. Tlingit
traditions tell of small family groups venturing
in boats or rafts down the rivers under the

glaciers that once arched over the waters, sug¬
gesting how early migration might have come
from the interior, to mix with resident coastal
populations. Native history indicates changes in
coastal populations as far back as 300 years,
when Haida from the Queen Charlotte Islands
moved north, displacing Tongas Tlingit, and
when Northern Tlingit expanded north across
the Gulf of Alaska, intermarrying with Athapas-
kans and exerting strong Tlingit influence on
the Eyak. Through such contacts with other
tribes totemic crests and other clan prerogatives
have been exchanged and elaborated. The Tlin¬
git seem always to have had an appetite for
foreign items such as clothing, songs, names,
symbols of rank, secret tricks to be dramatically
displayed at feasts, and even foreign superna¬
tural objects to aid the power of their shamans.

The Tlingit life described here was recorded
by early explorers of the late 18th and 19th
centuries. This period was one of cultural flo¬
rescence resulting from stimulation by foreign
contacts, the fine craftsmanship made possible
by steel tools, and the wealth obtained by
Tlingits through the European fur trade. This
wealth made possible the great Tlingit cere¬

monies — funerals, house dedications, and me¬

60. Trap Sticks

Tlingit: NMNH 398408-10
Trap sticks functioned as trigger
mechanisms in deadfalls used to cap¬
ture small furbearers. Usually made
of whalebone, their figural images
were probably intended to lure prey
to the trap. The carvings on these
sticks include a skeletized bird, a
bear or wolf presiding over a corpse-
like human, and a bird emerging
from a fishlike creature. Both hunting
magic (p. 151) and crest art (p. 271)
are implied by these images.

61. Goathom Spoons

(Top to bottom) Haida: NMNH
89167. Tlingit: NMNH 9273.

Haida: NMNH 88924
The importance of feasting and dis¬
play motivated Tlingit and Haida art¬
ists to produce masterful miniature
sculpture — in essence, miniature to¬
tem poles — on the handles of spoons
and ladles of mountain goat horn.

morial potlatches — for which luxury items were
made or imported: such things as the great
Haida canoes of red cedar; Tsimshian carved
rattles, masks, and headdresses; Athapaskan
pelts, tanned skins, and beadwork; commercial
sheet copper, Hudson's Bay blankets and por¬
celain dishes; abalone and dentalium shells, and
even slaves from southern British Columbia.

The Tlingit live today in a rugged and beautiful
country, a land of islands, deep fjords, and steep¬
sided mountains from whose snowfields glaciers
descend to the sea. The lower slopes are covered
with spruce and hemlock, with red cedar in the
south, and an almost impenetrable undergrowth
of alders, berry bushes, and thorny devil's club.
In the past some tribes with mainland territories
hiked up the so-called "grease trails” to ex¬

change fish oil for the furs of their Athapaskan
trading partners, but most travel was by canoe.
Tlingit even used to paddle hundreds of miles
across the open Gulf of Alaska or south to Puget
Sound on peaceful trading visits or savage raids.
A variety of large and small canoes was used
for war, hunting sea mammals, deep-sea fishing,
and river travel.

Land mammals, even bears, were usually
taken by snares and deadfall traps, although
brave hunters with spears (later with guns)
"fought” black bears and even the huge brown
grizzlies when they emerged from their dens in
spring, as if they were human adversaries.
Mountain goats, prized for their fat and meat,
horns (for spoon handles and the spikes in
shamans' crowns), and wool (for Chilkat blan¬
kets), were hunted above timberline, but only
with the assent of the mountain spirit. Although
other furbearers were taken in plain traps, the
trigger sticks for marmot traps were decorated,
for otherwise, this animal would disdain the trap.

It was on the bounty of the sea, however, that
the Tlingit largely depended. Most important
were the five species of salmon that every year
ascended the rivers and streams. Although rock
carvings near the mouths of some of these
streams may have been made to attract the fish,
it is more likely that they were used to proclaim
ownership. Salmon were easily taken by men
in weirs and traps or were speared with the
harpoon and gaff, but it required the hard work
of the women to cut, dry, and store the harvest.
So plentiful and reliable were the salmon runs
until they were overfished for the cannery in¬
dustry in the late 19th century that the Tlingit
never developed a true First Salmon ceremony
like some Northwest Coast nations. Still, care
was taken not to offend the fish. Herring and
eulachon also appeared in the spring and were
caught with fish rakes and dip nets. Spruce
boughs were placed in the water for herring to
spawn upon, and oil was extracted from eulachon
by boiling them in a canoe with hot rocks. Halibut
were caught on the open sea with ingeniously
fashioned, spiritually active hooks.

In addition to permanently resident birds like
eagles, gulls, magpies, crows, and ravens, the
Tlingit world is visited each year by myriad
flocks of ducks, geese, swans, and songbirds
that use the Pacific flyway. Young people fear¬
lessly scaled cliffs to rob nests of their eggs;
large birds furnished feathers for decoration and
downy skins for warm blankets, as well as meat.
Clams, cockles, mussels, sea urchins, crabs, and
seaweed were also eaten but were so easy to
get that such "beach food” was associated with
laziness, and overindulgence was thought to
cause poverty and nightmares.

All things — animals, birds, fish, insects, trees,
plants, mountains, glaciers, winds, and the sea
itself — were thought to possess in-dwelling souls
or spirits. Since these were more powerful than
human beings, they had to be treated with
respect, and there were special rules to be
observed in dealing with each species or being:
Successful hunting and fishing meant taking a
life like that of a person, and could be done only
if the creature permitted itself to be killed. The
dead animal had to be handled in the proper
way. Formerly, it was said, the hunter sang
special songs over his prey. Nor was waste
permitted; all remains not used for food, dress,
tools, or other purposes had to be burned or
returned to the water (depending on the species)
so that animal spirits could report to their kind
on their respectful treatment by humans and
could repopulate the species.

Although we may speak of tribes among the
Tlingit, these were traditionally only geographic
groups, not political units. The Sitkans, or mem¬
bers of a similar group, might consider them¬
selves to be distinguished from the inhabitants
of other towns through local customs or manner
of speech, but their true allegiances were to
their several clans, which were the real units of
Tlingit political, social, and ceremonial life. Each
tribe or town contained several clans or seg¬
ments of clans, relationships between which
were not always friendly.

Membership in a clan was based on the
mother's line. Clans belonged to two sides or
moieties. Ravens and Wolves (the latter called
Eagles in the north), that were opposites and
married and performed ceremonial services for
each other. These moieties had no other func¬
tions and never met as whole groups. Clans
were divided into matrilineal lineages, or houses.
A household, as distinguished from a house, was
composed of lineage brothers, with married-in
wives, their children, and some elders and poor
relations. The lineage, like the clan, was a
matrilineal descent group.

A clan usually took its name from its supposed
place of origin. Such a place, or a landmark
encountered in subsequent wanderings, might
be taken as a clan crest or emblem. A lineage
might also grow and create daughter houses
that could eventually become clans in their own
right.

The clan owned the most important forms of
property: territories for hunting, fishing, col¬
lecting wild food, firewood, and even drinking
water, and perhaps also exclusive rights to trade
routes. Trespassers might be attacked and killed,
but anyone claiming relationship to one of the
owners was free to use the resource. More
precious than these rights in the eyes of the

Tlingit were the totemic crests and ceremonial
prerogatives vested in the clan and lineage.
Rights to these were acknowledged at potlatches
when allusion was made to the familiar stories
of their acquisition and when guest clan "op¬
posites” accepted payment as witnesses.

The head of a lineage was the "master of the
house,” and the leader of the most important
house was the clan chief or "great man.” These
men and their immediate families were the
aristocrats and were careful to maintain their
rank by marrying spouses of equal status, which
often required seeking a bride from a distant

62. Personal Ornaments
Tlingit: (Clockwise from top) NMNH
72993, 209550; Haida: NMNH
88900, Tsimshian: NMNH 10313
Abalone shell, shark teeth, glass
beads, and iron were highly prized as
materials for making body orna¬
ments, and were traded widely. Aba¬
lone shell was especially valued, as
were shark teeth — two species of
which were crests of the Tlingit Wolf
phratry. Bead strings and iron orna¬
ments formed into bifurcated scrolls
were also popular. The latter motif
was popular on Athapaskan knife
handles (fig. 304).

63. "Cape and Rattle of Kolosh
[Tlingit] Shaman"

Pavel Mikhailov. SRM PM 29093/1
Pavel Mikhailov (1786-1840) was as¬
signed by the Russian Academy of
Arts as artist on the naval sloop
Moller, under the command of M. N.
Staniukovich, on its around-the-world
cruise of 1826-29. Mikhailov fol¬
lowed the customary instructions
given to Russian expedition artists:
drawings were to be made only from
direct observation; with full-faced
and profile views; and with attention
to details of physical features, arti¬
facts, and ornaments. The result was
a detailed ethnographic record of
peoples of South America and Rus¬
sian America.

In the latter location the Moller vis¬
ited Unalaska, Novo-Arkhangel'sk
(Sitka), Bristol Bay, and posts in the
Aleutian Islands in 1827-28. Among
the many sketches and watercolor
drawings made was this one of a
Tlingit shaman's robe and rattle. Lit¬
tle is known of the Moller expedition;
no report was issued, and only a few
of Mikhailov's illustrations have been
published (Shur and Pierce 1978;
Henry 1984:49).

64. Tobacco Pipes

Tlingit: (Left to right) NMNH 18912,
74926, 20844

When northern Northwest Coast peo¬
ple adopted "western" tobacco in
place of their original custom of suck¬
ing a mixture of their indigenous to¬
bacco and lime, they also incorpo¬
rated smoking into their rutual
activity of the memorial feast for the
dead. Pipes used in this manner were
elaborately sculptured with crest fig¬
ures or illustrations of mythical inci¬
dents. The left-hand pipe represents
a killer whale "tail-walking," as it
sometimes appears, inspecting the
world above water; the middle pipe,
a woodworm, depicts a crest of the
Tlingit Raven moiety; while on the
right, a sea otter floats on its back.
Walnut wood from the stocks of mus¬
kets and musket barrels were used in
the manufacture of these pipes. Na¬
tive Tlingit tobacco, a relative of the
Eastern North American variety that
traveled around the world and en¬
tered the Northwest Coast at the
time of European contact, is a lost
cultigen and no longer grows in this
region.

tribe, perhaps linking together two chiefly lines
through several generations. Nobility, however,
depended upon more than birth, since wealth,
conduct, and family reputation were also im¬
portant.

Chiefs were the trustees of common property,
with authority to regulate hunting or fishing in
clan territories or to mobilize clan wealth for
major ceremonies. House heads and other men
of rank formed the council of the clan chief. The
principal wife of the house chief was the guardian
of her husband's treasures and supervised the
household work.

Of a lower rank than the aristocrats, who slept
in partitioned rooms at the back of the plank
house, were the ill-defined commoners, their
junior relatives, who slept on the side benches.
Lowest of all were the no-accounts who slept
with the slaves just inside the door. Slaves were
those taken in war, and their descendants. As
chattels, slaves were outside Tlingit society, to
be bought, sold, killed, or freed at the whim of
their masters.

The Tlingit man or woman owed patriotic
loyalty to his or her clan, a duty that transcended
marital ties. Wars or lawsuits — there was no
distinction in Tlingit language — were fought or
prosecuted by clans, not by individuals or tribes,
although several clans, even from different tribes,
might join as allies. Any injury to a person or
property of a clan member required compen¬
sation, the amount usually having been deter¬
mined by consultation between the chiefs. In a
serious case the whole clan was held responsible
for damages if the defendant and his close kin
could not make compensation. Most cases were
settled by payment of property, but a killing,
even if accidental, sometimes led to a feud,
which ended only when the losses were evened.
The life of a chief was worth so much more than
that of a commoner, or even of several ordinary
persons, that if a chief was killed, the life of an
equal had to be paid. Accounts tell of chiefs and
aristocratic men and women who freely gave
their own lives to spare their clanmates further
bloodshed in cases where the killer was of too
low a rank to atone for his own act. Peace was
established through the exchange of hostages
(deer dancers), who were the foci for magically
binding rituals during the eight-day peace cer¬
emonies.

Feuds within a tribe or village were usually
settled quickly because relatives on both sides
pressed for settlement, but wars between clans
in distant villages were savage and sometimes
lasted for years, even breaking out again after
peace settlements. The Tlingit war party trav¬
eled in large war canoes, the chief or his des¬
ignated nephew directing from the bow and an

elderly matron of rank steering. Warriors were
equipped with daggers, spears, bows and ar¬
rows, and war clubs. The body was protected
by armor made of wooden slats or rods, and the
neck and head by a wooden collar and heavy
helmet, the latter carved to represent his clan
crest animal or a ferocious human face. More
often, for freedom of movement, the warrior
simply tied his hair on top of his head, painted
his face, and wore a rawhide tunic painted with
a clan crest. Attacks were planned to surprise
the enemy in their beds at night. The heads of
slain warriors were taken as trophies, and women
and children were often enslaved.

Each Tlingit clan was distinguished by its
crests, its houses or lineages usually having
special versions of these. Crests are symbolic
representations of some species of animal, bird,
fish, or invertebrate, but also include heavenly
bodies, landmarks, and even ancestral heroes
and supernatural beings. A clan usually had
several crests. Clan history told how ancestors
obtained their crests through supernatural en¬
counters. The most important crests of the Raven
clans are: Raven, Owl, Whale, Sea Lion, Salmon,
Frog, Sleep Bird, Sun, Moon, Big Dipper, and
Ocean Waves. On the opposite side are: Eagle,
Petrel, Wolf, Bear, Killer Whale, Shark, Halibut,
and Thunderbird. Beaver and Golden Eagle (or
Fish Hawk) were Wolf-Eagle crests on the Gulf
Coast but belonged to Raven clans in south¬
eastern Alaska.

The plank house (fig. 264) and the woven
spruce-root hat were the two most important
possessions of the clan and its chief on which
clan crests were displayed. The rear screen
inside the house, the four major house posts,
and the facade were carved and painted to
illustrate stories about the crests. Crests of clan
and lineage also appeared on totem poles (re¬
ceptacles for ashes of the dead) and grave

houses; on spoons and ladles, feast dishes,
tobacco pipes, speaker's staffs, song leader's
poles, drums, and other objects used in cere¬
monies; on ceremonial garments such as Chilkat
blankets, button blankets or beaded shirts, painted
aprons, and headdresses with frontlet masks;
and on armor, daggers, powder horns, and war
canoes.

All crest objects, including the house and
grave, were supposedly made by members of
the opposite moiety, who were publicly re¬
warded at a potlatch. The display of any crest
required payment to all members of the opposite
side who were present, since they were wit¬
nesses to the owners' right to that crest. In this
way, if the crest was some landmark in the
clan's territory, acceptance of the gifts affirmed
the clan's territorial rights. Crest objects and
other things featured at potlatches were treas¬
ured as heirlooms and were safeguarded in the
chiefs house.

Objects of particular wealth, which were often
decorated with crest designs, were the shield¬
shaped sheets of copper. "Coppers” were ap¬
propriate as marriage or potlatch gifts or as the
purchase price for land. All Northwest Coast
coppers that have been tested are made of
European copper, intended for or used as sheath¬
ing for ships' bottoms. Although some copper
may have been scavenged by the Indians from
wrecked ships, most copper was obtained by
purchase from European traders. Presumably
there was an earlier prototype made of native
copper, perhaps like the coppers sketched by
Captain Colnett among the Haida in 1787 and
described as "their under armour.”

The great ceremonies of the Tlingit centered
around the dead. The bereaved clan, or hosts,
entertained their opposites, the paternal and
affinal kin of the deceased, and rewarded them
for their funeral services. The giving of gifts —
the potlatch proper — benefited and honored the
dead while raising or maintaining the prestige
of their descendants who bore their names. The
rites for men, women, and children were similar,
although they were naturally most elaborate for
a deceased chief and the installation of his
successor.

When such a man died, there were tradition¬
ally eight days of mourning, during the first four
of which the body lay in state, surrounded by
the clan or lineage treasures. Bereaved clan
members, wearing old clothes and cut or singed
hair, sang the clan mourning songs, and the
opposites offered comfort. After four days, the
opposites cremated the corpse and put the ashes
in the lineage grave house or box. That night
the mourners hosted a "smoking feast” at which
everyone smoked or took snuff, and tobacco was

put in the fire for all the dead of the clan. The
mourning period ended with a feast, at which
time the leader called upon all members of the
clan, in turn, to introduce a song in memory of
a dead relative. Then gifts were given to the
guests, those of rank receiving the most. This
potlatch was called "feeding the dead." Some¬
times a slave was sacrificed.

The mourners were then free to wash and
burn their old clothes, except for the widow,
who had to leave her face unwashed and re¬
mained in the care of her husband's sisters for
several months. At this time, a grave monument
was erected and the widow distributed all her
husband's and her own private property to his
heirs, and then married the designated man.
The grave was now finished, and the deceased's
clan paid for it at a final potlatch.

The great memorial potlatch, known as "set¬
ting up the dead,” involved all the members of
a tribe, either as hosts or as guests, and in
addition, a guest clan from another place was
invited, making two rival groups of guests who
"danced against each other." Only the wealthy
could afford to give such a potlatch, although
the principal host, who thereby assumed the
title and position of his predecessor, was assisted
by contributions from all his clanmates. Other
houses of his moiety usually helped entertain
the guests at this time, so that there were several
days of feasting and dancing with dramatic
displays of feats of gluttony before the great
climax when the property was distributed. Such
a major potlatch was planned months, and some¬
times years, in advance in order to notify the
guests from far away and to accumulate the
necessary property and food. It also required
the building (or rebuilding) of a new house or
houses, or perhaps moving the remains of the
clan dead to new grave houses or boxes. The
new house would be "danced together” by the
host and his clanmates before any guests were
entertained, and stood as a memorial to all the
dead of the clan or lineage.

Shamanism was an important feature of Tlingit
society. In every clan there was at least one
shaman, who might be either a man or a woman
but was usually male. The shaman's power was
greater than a chief's, but sometimes chiefs, or
their brothers, were also shamans. Tlingit sha¬
mans derived their power from special spirits
and from power objects. Shamans were believed
able to discover breaches of taboo, control the
weather, foretell the future, secure news of
distant persons, rescue those captured by Land
Otter Men, cure the sick, and identify witches.
Shamans could be recognized by their long,
tangled locks (to wash or cut which was forbid¬
den) and by their haggard faces and gaunt

65. Raven Rattle
Tlingit: MAE 2448-24
Raven rattles are one of the most
characteristic artifact types of North¬
west Coast Indian culture. This rattle
is of a style dating to the early 19th
century. Both the sculpture and the
formline detail (p. 287) have a mas¬
sive angularity often seen in Tlingit
art from the early historic period. The
rattle differs from most in that there
is no sign that the man ever had an
extended tongue; there is no frog
represented (usually present if the
tail bird is reversed); and the figure
on the rattle's breast has no recurved
beak. There may have once been
feathers carved on the bird's tail, but
they are no longer present. Some
early rattles portray puffins, but this
one has the typical raven form.

66. Sea Lion Headdress
Tlingit: MAE 5795-12
Crest art was a feature of Northwest
Coast art that distinguished it from
other North Pacific and Bering Sea
cultures. Crests were emblematic in¬
signia (usually animals or mythologi¬
cal creatures) adopted by social
groups because of their mythological
associations with the group's past.
Despite their social affiliation, crest
objects could be traded or sold by
chiefs. This artistic system differed
from the use of animal art in hunting
magic, the other major artistic system
common to the North Pacific region.

This expertly sculptured headdress
in the form of a sea lion probably
once had a hide panel attached to the
back of the head with a formline de¬
sign of the animal's body. (Just such
a panel is in the collection of the
Anthropological Museum of Lomono¬
sov State University in Moscow and
may have become separated from its
mate.) Long whiskers were inset in
holes in the snout, and rows of
teeth — probably opercula — lined the
mouth. The elegance of the original
work is apparent even in its present
incomplete state. When worn, it
pointed upward, in the normal atti¬
tude of the sea lion.

bodies, exhausted from frequent thirsting and
fasting. A shaman's powers were acquired on
quests in the woods when spirits were encoun¬
tered, the usual number, accumulated over a
period of time, traditionally being eight. Each
was represented by the skin or other parts of
an animal (talons, beak, jaws) that were put
together into a bundle to be worn when practic¬
ing, and also by the paintings and carvings on
the shaman's paraphernalia: headdresses, masks,
rattles, drum, and amulets. The animals most
commonly figured on shaman's equipment were
the land otter, bear, mountain goat, frog, devil¬
fish, oyster catcher, and even invertebrates.
These spirits also appeared to the shaman in
human form and probably were ultimately de¬
rived from the ghosts of the dead. During per¬
formances, each spirit was summoned when the
shaman's clanmates sang its song and the as¬
sistant beat the drum, while the shaman donned
his garb. The spirit then entered the shaman's
body and spoke through his or her mouth, usually
in a foreign tongue or obscure language.

When someone fell sick of an illness that did
not yield to ordinary remedies, and especially if
the patient was wealthy and of high rank, witch¬
craft was suspected. At such a time a shaman
of a different clan, and preferably from a different
village, was called in to name the one causing
the illness and to exact a confession under torture
and force the guilty party to undo the harmful
spell. The witch or "master of sickness'' was
often someone, usually a man, inherently evil
and consumed by envy of another's good for¬
tune. He was one who possessed or was pos¬
sessed by a malign spirit or power that made
him "crazy” and drove him to frequent grave¬

yards, where he reveled with the dead. It ena¬
bled him to change shape, fly through the air,
and to kill by black magic. Witches obtained food
leavings or scraps of clothing from the intended
victim and made them into a doll in the likeness
of the latter, placing it in a grave to rot. The evil
could be neutralized if the confessed witch
removed the doll and plunged with it into the
sea. If the victim was cured, the witch might be
pardoned, but the evil taint was passed on to all
the witch's descendants. Witchcraft was the
ultimate treason.

Unlike other members of society, who were
cremated at death, a shaman's body was thought
not to decay and was placed in a grave house
with his dangerous paraphernalia nearby so that
a successor in the same clan might soon become
inspired.

Despite many years of contact with Europe¬
ans, which began in 1741 when Captain Chiri¬
kov's vessel St. Paul made landfall in the Sitka
region, the Tlingit maintained their traditional
subsistence and culture for a century, success¬
fully resisting Russian domination and skillfully
exploiting European rivalries to their own ad¬
vantage. However, the first decades after the
U.S. purchase in 1867 brought major dislocations
to Tlingit society and culture as the territory
was flooded by prospectors, adventurers, mili¬
tary and government men, and missionaries.
The opening of salmon canneries and the estab¬
lishment of local businesses and schools resulted
in major changes to traditional Tlingit economic
and social life. This process was further hastened
by the Gold Rush of 1898-99, such that by the
end of the century Tlingit acculturation to Amer¬
ican society was well advanced.

Northern Athapaskans: People of the Deer

James W. VanStone

The area occupied by northern Athapaskan In¬
dians lies directly south of the true arctic regions
in a belt of coniferous forests broken in places
by high mountains and stretches of treeless
tundra. Except in the far western portion where
the Rocky Mountains occur, much of this area
is of relatively slight elevation, and there are
numerous low, rolling glaciated hills. The climate
of the region is characterized by long, cold
winters and short, warm summers. Snowfall is
heavier than along the arctic coast, and in general
the climate is quite different from the desertlike
coastal areas inhabited by Eskimos.

The northern Athapaskans inhabit the western
part of this coniferous forest belt, specifically
the drainage of the Yukon River and those parts
of the Northwest Territories, northern British
Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba
drained by the Mackenzie River. The total area
of Athapaskan occupancy falls naturally into two
sections, a Pacific and an arctic drainage area.
In spite of the pervasiveness of the northern
coniferous forest and its seeming uniformity

67. Athapaskan Hunter
The Athapaskans, nomadic hunters
and fishermen, did not have an ex¬
tensive inventory of material culture.
Great artistic effort was invested,
however, in clothing, jewelry, and
weapons. This chiefly hunter's tunic,
leggings, and mitts are of tanned car¬
ibou or moose skin ornamented with
fringes and a bright display of beads
and dentalium shells. Dentalium shell
earrings, nose pin, and tattoos aug¬
ment the majesty of his appearance.

A quiver, bow, and hunting knife
complete the outfit. FM 14937
(quiver), USNM 1857 (tunic, leg¬
gings), 43352 (arrows), 153428
(knife), 209941 (bow)

over vast distances, the mountainous nature of
much of the region occupied by northern Atha¬
paskans and its considerable spread — from north
to south as well as from east to west — is such
that there are few areas of North America within
which the environmental contrasts are so great
and the natural barriers between native groups
so formidable.

The various groups of northern Athapaskans
speak languages that belong to the Athapaskan
branch of the Na-Dene speech family. In fact, it
is primarily language, together with occupation
of a common territory, that serves to set off the
various Athapaskan groups from one another
since, like the Eskimos, they do not have formal
tribal organization.

The northern Athapaskan area can be con¬
veniently divided into five contiguous physio¬
graphic units that give maximum recognition to
the most significant ecological factors that have
influenced the lives of the Indians. These are
the arctic drainage lowlands, dominated by the
basin of the Mackenzie River; the cordilleran,
named in recognition of the great mountain chain
running in a generally south to north direction
through western British Columbia and the Yukon
Territory into Alaska; the Yukon and Kuskokwim
river basins; the Cook Inlet— Susitna River basin;
and the Copper River basin.

The arctic drainage lowlands are occupied
only by Canadian Athapaskans, and those groups
will not be discussed here. Four Alaskan groups
live in the cordilleran region, the Upper Koyukon,
Kutchin, Han, and Upper Tanana. All except the
Upper Koyukon extend into Canada. The re¬
maining physiographic units are entirely within
Alaska. The Ingalik, Koyukon, and Tanana in¬
habit the Yukon and Kuskokwim river basins;
the Tanaina, the only Athapaskan group living
on the seacoast, occupy the Cook Inlet— Susitna
River basin; and the Ahtna live in the Copper
River basin. The most reliable estimates avail¬
able for the late 19th and early 20th centuries
indicate a population of 6,750 for these groups.

The subsistence activities of all northern Atha¬
paskans reflected a changing economic relation¬
ship to their environment throughout the year.
Athapaskans were exclusively hunters and gath¬
erers, but there were considerable differences
in emphasis in the use by specific groups of the
natural resources available to them.

Although the arctic drainage lowlands are
outside the scope of this account, it can be noted
that the people there were primarily hunters,
exploiting all the animal resources in their en¬
vironment, particularly moose and caribou. In
the northern part of the cordilleran region oc¬
cupied by Alaskan groups subsistence also cen¬
tered around the hunting of large game animals.

However, the Kutchin, extending considerably
to the west of the mountain chain, exhibited
greater diversity in their subsistence activities.
In the east, the Chandalar Kutchin were typically
big-game hunters of the high country. Caribou,
the most important animal hunted, were taken
in surrounds, and when large game was scarce,
many small mammals provided an alternative
food supply as did a variety of birds, particularly
ptarmigan and spruce hens in winter and ducks
and geese during the summer months. Unlike
other Kutchin, the Chandalar made little use of
fish, although they were occasionally taken in
winter through the ice.

This lack of emphasis on fishing separated the
Chandalar Kutchin from the groups to the west.
In the Yukon Flats area, for example, from early
July until early September the Indians took
salmon with dip nets and basket-shaped traps.
When the fishing season was over, the Yukon
Flats people hunted moose and caribou until the
river was frozen. Although predictable fish runs
allowed the Yukon Flats Kutchin to enjoy a
certain stability unknown to peoples almost com¬
pletely dependent on hunting, periods of star¬
vation were known to all the Kutchin and, indeed,
to most Athapaskans.

In the Yukon and Kuskokwim river basins
fishing was of primary importance and took
precedence over all other forms of subsistence.
The Ingalik and other inhabitants of this region
hunted moose, caribou, bear, and most other
subarctic animals, but it was fishing that gave
stability to their way of life, a stability not
approached in the other physiographic units. In
keeping with the importance of fishing and the
variety of fish available in the environment, the
Ingalik had a highly developed fishing technol¬
ogy. Long-handled dip nets were used for taking
salmon in spring and summer, and netlike drags
of willows were used in the shallow waters of
the innumerable Yukon sloughs. For lake fishing,
fish-shaped lure hooks were characteristic and
gill nets of various sizes were used in both
summer and winter. The most common method
of fishing among the Ingalik, however, was the
use of basket-shaped traps of varying sizes and
shapes for dog salmon, whitefish, losh, blackfish,
jackfish, and grayling. They were set in swift
water in spring and summer and under the ice
in winter. Traps were particularly effective in
the muddy waters of the Yukon and its lower
tributaries where they could not be seen by the
fish. Most fish caught during summer months
were dried and stored in caches for dog food as
well as human consumption.

For the Tanaina Indians in the Cook Inlet—
Susitna River basin, sea mammal hunting was
of considerable importance in restricted areas

of their territory. The Cook Inlet Tanaina pos¬
sessed Eskimo-like kayaks from which seals were
hunted with bows and arrows or harpoons. Sea
otters, whose skins were highly prized in the
early period of European contact, were hunted
by special parties organized for the purpose.
The animals could be killed easily from kayaks
with bows and arrows or harpoons in calm
weather when they were sleeping on their backs.

The hunting of sea lions was restricted to the
Kachemak Bay region. These large animals were
usually harpooned, the wounded creature drag¬
ging a line with a sealskin float attached until it
tired and could be killed by a hunter with a
bone-headed spear. Belugas, or white whales,
are common in the upper inlet area, where they
feed on tomcod. Several hunters were required
in taking belugas, which were hunted with the
same size of harpoon used for sea lions.

It is clear that in the hunting of sea mammals
the Tanaina were heavily influenced by their
Eskimo neighbors. Their area was also rich in
land animals including black bears, caribou,
moose, and, on the eastern edge of the upper
inlet country, mountain sheep and goats.

The subsistence patterns of the Ahtna of the
Copper River basin have never been described
in detail. Although living in a mountainous region
rich in game, the Ahtna, like the Yukon and
Kuskokwim river basin groups, depended heav¬
ily on salmon fishing. In the turbulent Copper
River, fishing presented special problems that
did not occur often elsewhere in the Athapaskan
area. Gill nets and traps were easily swept away
by the fast waters, so the Indians depended
heavily on dip nets to take the several varieties
of salmon as they ascended the river to spawn.
Moose and bear were the most important large
game animals, but early explorers reported that
the Ahtna depended heavily on small game,
particularly hares, to carry them through those
periods in late winter and early spring when
supplies of dried fish were low.

Although the emphasis has been on those
activities and techniques that were of particular
importance in the major ecological zones of the
Athapaskan area, this should not obscure the
fact that throughout the region there was con¬
siderable uniformity. Every animal in the envi¬
ronment was utilized when the need arose, and
many of the methods and techniques used to
take them were common throughout the area.
Subsistence activities in the western subarctic
were highly generalized, at least in comparison
to the specialized nature of subsistence in some
other areas of North America.

The dwellings of aboriginal northern Atha-
paskans, reflecting the extreme mobility of most
of these groups, were among the simplest con¬

structed by any people in North America. As
might be expected, the simplest structures were
found among the most mobile groups, and more
complex construction was characteristic of the
more sedentary peoples. Among every Atha¬
paskan group, the pattern of shelter reflected
not only the subsistence activities characteristic
of particular times of the year but also climatic
variations.

Although the cordilleran region has a consid¬
erable north to south range, the dwelling types
within this vast region did not exhibit a great
deal of variation, and reflected the mobility that
characterized the groups that inhabited the re¬
gion. The Upper Tanana may be considered
reasonably typical. The several types of houses
utilized by these people can be grouped into
two categories: semipermanent and temporary.
In the former category was the circular winter
house, which consisted of a frame of long, curved
poles, the lower ends of which were stuck in the
snow; the upper ends did not come together at
the top, thus leaving a smoke hole. These poles
were reinforced by being lashed to two horizon¬
tal poles, the arches of which followed the inner
curve of the structure. The typical domed lodge,
covered with sewn moose hides, was about 14
feet in diameter, 8 feet high, and required
between 18 and 20 hides for its cover.

Summer houses among the Upper Tanana
were somewhat more permanent and located
near good fishing sites. These dwellings were
rectangular in floor plan, with parallel series of
poles driven into the ground to make an outside
and inside wall. Strips of spruce or birch bark
were then laid between them. Sometimes these
houses, which were as much as 20 or 30 feet in
length and occupied by several families, had flat
roofs, but a gabled roof was probably more
characteristic. This type of summer dwelling
was widely distributed among cordilleran Atha-
paskans and was also used by the Ahtna of the
Copper River basin (fig. 262).

The only temporary shelters used by the
Upper Tanana were of simple lean-to construc¬
tion, covered with bark or boughs. Often two
such shelters were built facing each other with
a fire between them and each side occupied by
a family. This double lean-to construction was
typical of many northern Athapaskans in all
physiographic units.

It is likely that even the most permanent of
the structures just described were not often
constructed twice in the same place. In the
Yukon and Kuskokwim river basins more seden¬
tary groups like the Ingalik occupied permanent
winter villages and summer fish camps usually
not far from the winter settlements. The Ingalik
live in close proximity to the Eskimo of the lower

68. Fort Yukon Indian
SI neg. 6362

By the time Smithsonian naturalist
Edward W. Nelson arrived at the
trading post at St. Michael in 1877,
posts had been operating on the Yu¬
kon River for many years. Despite the
presence of these facilities, Indians
sometimes traveled to St. Michael to
trade. These visits were eagerly an¬
ticipated by the Indians, and while at
the post they dressed in fancy clothes
and enjoyed the pleasures of the vil¬
lage.

Nelson took this photograph during
such a visit by a Fort Yukon Indian,
here seen posing with his shotgun in
an ornate suit of clothes. Unlike Es¬
kimo clothing of the area, which was
decorated by needlework and appli¬
que without beads, Indian garments
were made of heavily fringed buck¬
skin and were decorated with a com¬
bination of European and native
beaded designs. The beaded pouch
has a floral design first introduced
into northeastern North America from
Europe, later to be carried west
through Indian contacts in connection
with missionary and trading activi¬
ties.

This Indian has red-painted cheeks,
seen also on Indian masks from An-
vik and other Lower Yukon River re¬
gions (fig. 439).

Yukon River, and their culture has been influ¬
enced in a number of ways by Eskimos. In few
areas is this influence more noticeable than in
housing.

The Ingalik erected at least three types of
winter houses of varying sizes, all of which
resembled to a marked degree the semisubter¬
ranean, earth-covered Eskimo house of South¬
west Alaska. The smaller structures were about
16 feet long and slightly less wide, but much
larger ones were also built. In addition, in their
winter villages they constructed a kashim, or
ceremonial house, which was also semisubter¬
ranean and as much as 35 feet by 25 feet in
size. It had a cribbed roof, a long entryway that
widened to form a separate room, and benches
on all four sides. The kashim, a characteristic
feature of Eskimo villages throughout Southwest
Alaska, served as a sleeping room and work
room for the men, a place to take sweat baths,
and a theater for religious and secular ceremo¬
nies.

A number of different dwellings were also
constructed in summer villages and fish camps.
They were aboveground, rectangular structures
with pitched roofs and walls of vertically placed
spruce planks, spruce bark, or birch bark strips.
The Ingalik also made smokehouses, constructed
like the summer houses, for smoking fish.

In the Cook Inlet— Susitna River basin, the
Tanaina Indians, who were even more sedentary
than the Ingalik, constructed a large log winter
house with a gabled roof that could have several
rooms and a bathhouse attached. The Tanaina
also made semispherical lodges with pole frame¬
works and bark or grass covering for use on
hunting trips during all seasons of the year.

Although northern Athapaskans lacked any
concept of group identification beyond that of
territory or language, each of the identified
groups or tribes was divided into subgroups. It
was these subgroups rather than the larger
enclaves that had social meaning to the people
themselves.

Most aboriginal northern Athapaskans spent
at least part of the year in small aggregates or
local bands consisting of a few nuclear families,
but at certain times of the year the ecology of
an area permitted several small units of this
type to come together to form a regional band.
Summer fishing and fall caribou migrations are
good examples of the kinds of situations that
permitted local bands to gather as a regional
band, usually associated with a particular region,
shaped in large measure by the drainage pattern
of the land. The regional band exploited the total
range of the land as identified by tradition and
use. It utilized all the resources within the range
and could exist for many generations. The local

band exploited its smaller range and was essen¬
tially a grouping of close kinsmen, and since its
temporal duration was related to the activities
for which it was organized, it might be in
existence for only a generation or two.

Both offensive and defensive warfare were
known among northern Athapaskans, and this
type of activity frequently led to another type
of leader: the war leader. These individuals were
usually aggressive men who dominated through
their physical strength. Generally speaking, war
represented retaliation for offenses committed
by relative strangers upon members of the
group. Since revenge in turn promoted the desire
for fresh vengeance on the part of the opposite
side, antagonism between groups could be
chronic.

The basic unit of social organization among
northern Athapaskans was the nuclear family
consisting of a man, his wife or wives, and their
natural or adopted children. Throughout much
of the Athapaskan area, extended kinship was
characterized by the presence of matrilineal sib
organization, consanguineal kin groups that ac¬
knowledged a traditional bond of common de¬
scent in the maternal line. These sibs generally
were exogamous; that is, a person had to find
a mate outside his sib. Sib affiliations played an
important part in warfare, marriages, funerals,
and potlatches. Matrilineal residence, whereby
a newly married couple lives with or near the
bride's family, was characteristic throughout
much of the area.

An important feature of social organization
among many Athapaskans was the potlatch, a
ceremony in honor of the dead that is best
known as it occurs among Indians of the North¬
west Coast. Among Athapaskans, the potlatch
was most fully developed among western tribes,
a fact that has led to the general belief that the
trait diffused from the Northwest Coast into the
Athapaskan area. The potlatch was the chief
means by which an individual achieved prestige
in his own or neighboring bands. If a man aspired
to be a leader, he had to give a potlatch whenever
possible, and the death of even a distant relative
provided an excuse to celebrate and distribute
gifts.

If one were to select the single most consistent
feature of aboriginal Athapaskan magico-reli-
gious belief systems, it would be the significant
reciprocal relationship that existed between men
and the animals on which they were dependent
for their livelihood. Superior-subordinate aspects
were largely absent from this relationship, pos¬
sibly because of a widespread belief in reincar¬
nation in animal form. This belief tended to blur
the distinction between animals and men, and
to emphasize the fact that the spirits of animals

had to be placated if men were to continue their
exploitative relationship to the environment.

Another characteristic of the belief system
was its individualism. The cultures of hunting
peoples must of necessity socialize individuals
to a high degree of independence, since survival
depends to a large degree on individual skills.
From the standpoint of religion, this meant that
a great deal of emphasis was placed on individual
rituals rather than on community rites.

Personal power was the vital element in reli¬
gious life and those individuals with the most
personal power, the shamans, were the only
professional religious practitioners. The shaman
and the magico-religious practices he used to
control the spirit world were the most important
features of northern Athapaskan religion, and
were, in most respects, similar to shamanistic
practices among the Eskimos and Tlingits. The
primary duties of any shaman were to prevent
and cure disease. In addition, shamans also
brought game to hunters, predicted the weather,
and were able to foretell the future.

Although dramatic group ceremonies were
not prevalent among the individualistic northern
Athapaskans, some did occur, particularly among
western groups. The potlatch may be considered
such a ceremony, even though its religious
elements were of minimal importance. The most
elaborate ceremonies were performed by the
Ingalik in their village kashims. Many of these
were associated with respect for animals, in¬
cluding not only species important for subsist¬
ence like salmon but also those that the Indians
feared and respected because of their consid¬
erable power, such as the wolf and wolverine.

The western subarctic was penetrated from
two directions by representatives of European
nations. From the east came English fur traders.
Having secured their position in eastern Canada,
they followed the continental rivers and lakes
to the interior of the Canadian northwest, where
trading posts were established in the drainage
of the Mackenzie River in the late 18th century.
From the west came the Russians who, after
1741, explored the coast and ascended the major

rivers into the interior. Trading posts had been
established among Alaskan Athapaskans by 1840.

It is possible to discern two major phases of
contact relations. The early contact period, which
lasted approximately between 1700 and 1850,
included rivalry between the Hudson's Bay Com¬
pany and its competitors in the east and the
trade monopoly of the Russian American Com¬
pany in the west. European diseases were in¬
troduced, frequently with devastating effects,
and the first Christian missionaries entered the
region. The stabilized fur trade and mission
period, which lasted from about 1850 to 1940,
was a time of relatively slow, uninterrupted
change, although more rapid in the west after
the purchase of Alaska by the United States in
1867. During this second period, Indians had
direct access to trade goods and intensive ex¬
posure to missionary influence. Mission and later
government schools were established, and there
was an intrusion of gold miners in some areas,
most notably on the upper Yukon River.

Indian life changed in some essential ways as
a result of involvement in the fur trade. Aborig¬
inal subsistence activities did not involve exten¬
sive trapping, and most of the fur-bearing ani¬
mals desired by the fur trade were not suitable
for food. It was the need to procure food to
support life during periods when animals without
food value were being hunted that eventually
bound the Indians closely to the posts where
they traded.

Trapping effectively signaled the end to ex¬
ploitation of the total environment. Specialized
knowledge of animal behavior was still an im¬
portant adaptive strategy, but its emphasis shifted
considerably. Knowledge of the habits of fur¬
bearing animals and their environments was
now of greater importance than a similar knowl¬
edge of large game animals and fish. This shift
of emphasis and its commercial implications also
disturbed the balanced reciprocal relationship
between the hunter and his animal spirit helpers,
thus undermining a basic aspect of the traditional
religious belief system.

Opposite:

"Aleut [of Kodiak Island] in Festival
Dress Demonstrating How They
Hunt" (Mikhail Tikhanov, 1817,
RIPSA 2127)

Strangers Arrive

69. "Barabaias or Houses of the Ko-
loshi along the Harbor of Novo-Ark-
hangel'sk"

Pencil drawing by I. G. Voznesenskii,

The Story of Russian America

Lydia T. Black

For almost a century and a half, beginning in
1741, Alaska was an integral part of the Russian
Empire. Then, overextended in the wake of the
defeat in the Crimean War in the 1850s and
afraid of British expansion to the North Pacific,
the Imperial government in 1867 invited the
United States to step in and take over the
territory. Two groups of people, more than any
others, were responsible for winning, and hold¬
ing, Alaska for Russia. These were the men of
the Russian Navy and, by far the most important,
the fur hunters and traders — the seagoing moun-
tainmen of the Russian North. Thus, the story
of the Russian expansion onto the American
continent begins long before 1741, the year a
Russian Navy squadron under Vitus Bering
claimed Alaska for Russia. In fact, Russians stood
on the Pacific by the beginning of the 1 7th
century, when Salem and Boston and English
settlements in Virginia were being founded or
were young and struggling. But the story of
Russian America really begins on the shores of

Alaska, was settled by the Russians between
the 5th and 9th centuries. Already between the
9th and the 11th centuries, Russian entrepre¬
neurs were extending their activities to the Ob
River in Siberia. Russian fishermen and sea
mammal hunters since the 13th century were
sailing to Novaia Zemlia for walrus and to Spits¬
bergen for cod, halibut, walrus, and whales
(Belov 1956). By the 1 5th century, such voyages
were a matter of course. Sailings along the shore
to the east were also common, but here the
mountainmen were but the spearhead. The ad¬
ministrator, the garrison, and the tax collector
followed close on their heels. By 1600, by orders
of the Tsar, the building of the commercial port
of Mangazeia on the Taz River, which empties
into the Ob near its mouth, was commenced.
This port was second only to the great city of
Arkhangel'sk, by then several centuries old. By
that year, the Russians also had reached the
Yenisei River to the east of the Ob.

Since the 15th century, the idea of a northern.

1843-45. MAE 1142-12
The Russian fort of Novo-Arkhan-
gel'sk ("New Archangel”) at Sitka,
Alaska, was built in 1 804-5 after the
Tlingit Indians (called Kolosh by the
Russians) overran and destroyed an
earlier Sitka fort. Novo- Arkhangel'sk
grew into a major trading post and
the administrative center of the Rus¬
sian American Company. The Rus¬
sians continued to feel threatened by
the presence of the Tlingits, who
built a large village around the walls
of the fort, yet depended on them for
fresh food.

70. Russian Double-headed Eagle
Crest

NMAH 420307

The double-headed eagle was the im¬
perial emblem of Tsarist Russia,
adopted from Byzantine heraldry in
the 15th century. Buried plates and
brass eagle crests were used to mark
Russian claims of American territory,
starting with the voyage of explorers
Bochorov and Izmailov in 1788. This

the Polar Sea, half a millennium earlier.

Pomorie, the coasts of the White and Barents
seas, the cradle of Russian polar navigation and
home to the ancestors of the men who claimed

coastal sea route to China and India was current
in Russia. Soon, the notion spread to Western
Europe. Holland and England, trading through
Arkhangel'sk in the 16th century for ships'

rare example entered the aboriginal
trade network and was excavated in
1934 from a late 18th-century Kliki-
tat Indian grave on an island in the
Columbia River, Oregon.

71. North Alaskan Eskimos, Cape
Smith

Edward Nelson, 1881. SI neg. 6394
In 1655 Dezhnev reported Chukchi
familiarity with the "toothed peo¬
ple"— Eskimos living on the Diomede
Islands in Bering Strait. The name
referred to the labrets (lip plugs)
worn by the Eskimo, and possibly to
the walrus tusk gores inset on their
parkas.

timber, cordage, beeswax, furs, and other prod¬
ucts of the Russian North, entered the search
for the Northeast Passage, but through the 17th
century there was little success in sailing the
long and icebound route along the Polar shores
of Eurasia with ships not suited for polar navi¬
gation.

In the meantime, Russian fur hunters and
traders steadily advanced along the coast, sailing
from river mouth to river mouth, penetrating
the Siberian interior by going upriver, portaging
to the next river drainage to the east, and
descending again to the sea. The Lena River
was reached early in the 1600s. Between 1633
and 1637, the basins of the Iana and Indigirka
rivers were explored. Moskvitin reached the
coast of the Okhotsk Sea, 1639—41. Others
followed in rapid succession. In 1643, Poiarkov
was at the mouth of the Amur River. By 1644
the Kolyma and the Polar shore of the Chukchi
Peninsula were reached. The Anadyr River
draining into the Bering Sea became known. By
the 1680s, the Kamchatka Peninsula was con¬
quered, and in 1711 the Kurile Islands were
explored. By this time, the sea route from the
Polar to the Bering Sea was well known locally.

In 1647, the expedition organized by Fedot
Popov and Aleksei Usov and led by Semeon
Dezhnev set out to round the Chukchi Peninsula

and reach the Anadyr River by sea. Popov and
Usov were men of the White Sea, descendants
of a long line of polar merchant-navigators.
Dezhnev was a Cossack. The expedition sailed
the koch, a vessel developed in the Pomorie
specifically for sailing in ice-infested polar waters
(Belov 1955, 1973). It was derived from the
more ancient lod'ia, a single-masted barque-
type vessel, a variant of the cargo vessels used
by the Scandinavian Vikings (Belov 1956). Sev¬

eral other expeditions followed the same route
within the next 20 years (Orlova 1951). The
existence of the ''Great Land" to the east of the
Chukchi Peninsula and across the "Eastern Sea"
was part of local knowledge, and so were the
Diomede Islands in the Bering Strait and in all
probability St. Lawrence Island.

The navy began to play an active role in the
reign of Peter the Great (1 682— 1 725). First under
his leadership, then under his successors, the
government began consistently to take the lead
in exploration of the northern regions and ad¬
vancement to the American continent. By 1713
the sea route to Kamchatka from the locality
that became the port of Okhotsk, the first Russian
port and shipbuilding center on the Pacific, was
explored. In 1716, the government authorized
the Great Kamchatka Command (Bolshoi Kam-
chatskii Nariad) under El'chin to explore the
Siberian northeast. In 1719, Peter sent the first
topographers, Evreinov and Luzhin, to survey
the Pacific shores. In 1720 they sailed from
Okhotsk to Kamchatka, in 1721 to the Kurile
Islands. In 1725, following the instructions Peter
the Great signed on his deathbed, Bering's first
expedition commenced, but Bering, instead of
sailing east, went to the north through the strait
that now bears his name in 1728 (Fisher 1988).
Between 1729 and 1733, an expedition under
Shestakov was ordered to explore Kamchatka
and Chukchi Peninsula, by land and by sea. As
part of this effort, in July 1732, the Navy vessel
Sv. Gavriil visited the Diomedes and stood off
Cape Prince of Wales, reporting the first official
contact between the Russian Navy and Alaskan
natives.

In the meantime, the government was pre¬
paring an enormous exploratory effort in the
North, both on the Polar and Pacific shores. This
effort, which lasted many years, is known as the
Great Northern Expedition. It commenced in
1 732 and covered three main areas: the northern
arm, comprising several detachments, charted
the entire Polar coast of Siberia; the second,
under Spanberg, was to chart the Okhotsk Sea
and the coasts of Japan; the third, under Bering,
was to sail to America, to the Spanish territories
in the south, and claim the northwest coast for
Russia. Bering's vessels reached the American
coast in 1741, establishing Russian sovereignty
over Alaska on an international basis. The land¬
falls made during this voyage determined the
boundaries of the territory of Alaska as it is
today.

Though the Russian government clearly in¬
tended to assert its sovereignty and presence
in the newly claimed lands on the American
continent, European wars (especially with Tur¬
key and Sweden) as well as internal Russian

politics intervened. Following Bering's expedi¬
tion to America until the end of the 18th century
the field, once again, fell to the private entre¬
preneur. The shipowners and builders of Kam¬
chatka and the fur hunters and skippers who
sailed in these vessels, built to the ancient
northern models, almost to a man were descend¬
ants of the sailors and sea mammal hunters and
of Cossacks who won eastern Siberia for the
crown. The sea held no terrors for them. Begin¬
ning in 1745, their advance eastward along the
Aleutian Island chain and then along the Pacific
coast of Alaska was rapid. Within 20 years, they
had a foothold on Prince William Sound and
were looking eastward to the Columbia River
and northward along the Alaskan coast to Bering
Strait.

The early skippers and foremen, sailing with
small crews, about half of whom were Kamchatka
natives, sought fur seal and sea otter for the
Chinese market in Kamchatka and Okhotsk waters
and in the Kurile Islands. The move to the
Aleutian chain was but an extension of an
ongoing enterprise. The environment was fa¬
miliar, and they could hold their own against
the Aleuts. They did not intentionally seek con¬
flict, though sporadic violence occurred. But in

the main, the skippers' object was trade, and
they sought to establish trading partnerships
with the Aleuts whenever they could. These
men were tough, resourceful, and able to endure
incredible hardships. Many died on the Alaskan
shores; others sailed the Aleutian waters and
explored Alaska for several decades.

In the eastern Aleutians, they encountered a
formidable people, the Qawalangin of Umnak
and Unalaska and the Qigigun of the Krenitzin
Islands. Beginning in December 1 763, the Aleuts
of these two groups, in concert with the people
of Unimak Island and the Alaska Peninsula,
destroyed four Russian vessels. Of the crews,
only 1 2 men (4 Russians and 8 Itelmen) survived.
The Russians, following their original loss, re¬
taliated, and the result was the beginning of the
end for Aleut independence.

Other Russian vessels arrived, and prodded
by the survivors as well as by considerations of
their own safety, one skipper, Ivan Solov'ev,
conducted a preventive strike against the Aleuts
of Unalaska. By destroying Aleut kayaks, hunting
equipment, and war weapons, Solov'ev forced
the Umnak/Unalaska alliance to sue for peace.
The period of Russian dominance in the eastern
Aleutians thus dates to the year of 1766. Spo-

72. Map of Siberia, First Bering
Expedition (1725-30)

Royal Library, Stockholm 2:12:17
The first Bering expedition produced
the earliest “ethnographic map" of
Siberia, with watercolor depictions of
Siberian peoples. Upper row, left to
right: portrait of a Yakut, a mounted
Reindeer Evenk man and woman, a
Koryak man on snowshoes, an Ainu
with harpoon, a Chukchi. Lower row:
a man with a bird and woman with a
fish of the unmounted or “foot" Tun-
gus, an Itelmen with dog sled.

73. Ivory Sea Otter with Pup
Aleut: MAE 2938-6
Special rituals surrounded the hunt¬
ing of sea otters, viewed by the Aleut
as transformed human beings.

74. Early Voyages of Exploration to
Alaska

The 1741 voyages of Vitus Bering
and Alexei Chirikov confirmed the ex¬
istence of Alaska, first reported by
the 1648 Dezhnev Expedition. The
Billings Expedition and other efforts
by Russia to explore Alaska and
strengthen its territorial claims were
stimulated by competing efforts such
as the Alaskan navigations of Great
Britain's Capt. James Cook in 1778.
Lisianskii's visit to Alaska was part of
the first Russian circumnavigation of
the globe (1803-1806).

Dezhnev 1648

Bering and Chirikov 1728

Bering 1741

Chirikov 1741

Cook 1778

Billings 1789-1792

Lisianskii 1804-1805

75. War Shield

Aleut (Kagamil Island): NMNH
389861

Aleut and Koniag warriors waged
successful attacks against the ships
and shore parties of early fur trading
expeditions. Russian firearms and
cannon, as well as the practice of
holding native hostages eventually
were successful in overcoming resist¬
ance.

76. Harpoon Arrow for Sea Otters
Koniag Eskimo: NMNH 16407
Using a technique known as "sur¬
round hunting," kayak hunters shot
these arrows as they drew an ever-
tightening circle around a sea otter in
the water. The barbed head buried
itself in the otter's flesh, while the
shaft detached, unrolled, and
dragged behind to retard the ani¬
mal's escape.

radic resistance to Russian intrusion continued
here and there in the Krenitzin Islands and on
Unimak, but never again were the Aleuts able
to mount a concerted effort of the kind that took
place between 1763 and 1766.

In the meantime, with the ascent to the throne
of Catherine the Great, in 1762, the Russian
government renewed its interest in establishing
control in the new lands. Twenty-five years after
Bering's voyage of 1741, the navy was once

again to sail to America. The plan was a complex
one. The foremost Russian scholar of the age,
Mikhail Lomonosov, became interested in the
old notion of the sea route to India via the Polar
Sea. In 1763, he presented the hypothesis that
the sea around the pole, above 80° latitude,
should be ice-free because of submarine volcanic
action and other factors. He proposed that not
only China and India would be much more easily
accessible via the cross-polar route but the
American continent as well (Lomonosov 1763/
1952). The project was approved by the admi¬
ralty, and in May 1765 a three-ship squadron,
commanded by Chichagov, sailed from the Kola
Peninsula, past Spitsbergen northward. He
reached 80°26' north latitude but was forced to
turn back by the pack ice. Next summer, he was
ordered by the admiralty to sea again, and again
was defeated by the pack ice. In the meantime,
the admiralty had dispatched to the Aleutian
archipelago a two-ship squadron under the com¬
mand of Captain Krenitsyn, known as the Lev-
ashev-Krenitsyn Expedition. They were to meet
Chichagov and exchange officers and crews so
that the largest number of sailors would become
familiar with the polar route on one hand and
with the Kamchatka- America route on the other.
The Levashev-Krenitsyn squadron, with most of
the experienced local merchant skippers called
into service as pilots and navigators, reached
Alaska in 1768, departing in 1769. This expe¬
dition produced the first navy charts of the
Krenitzin Islands, Unimak Island, and the Alaska
Peninsula as well as the first ethnographic ac¬
count of the eastern Aleut people. Invaluable

77. Grigori Shelikhov
(1747-1795)

78. Aleksandr Baranov (ca. 1747-

1819)

Engraving after a portrait by Mikhail
Tikhanov.

79. "View of Pavlovskii Harbor from
the North, 1798"

Attributed to James Shields
In order to take advantage of locally
abundant timber and an excellent
harbor, Aleksandr Baranov moved the
headquarters of Shelikhov's fur trad¬
ing company to Pavlovskii (St. Paul)
in 1792, at the site of the modern
city of Kodiak, Alaska. Buildings in
the settlement included company
headquarters. Orthodox church, bar¬
racks, storehouses, workshops, and
residences.

are Levashev's illustrations. He painted dwell¬
ings, costumes, tools, and weapons of the Qaw-
alangin (fig. 55) and produced the first technical
sketches of the kayaks and umiaks used there.

This activity of the Russian Navy aroused
great interest on the part of Western European
powers, and in 1778 Britain dispatched Capt.
James Cook to North Pacific waters — a step that
could not but alarm the Russian government. In
response, Catherine the Great decided to show
the Imperial flag in no uncertain terms. Russian
discoveries in the Pacific Ocean were for the
first time officially proclaimed by the govern¬
ment. Beginning with 1785, a navy expedition
to the North Pacific, under Captain Billings, was
sailing from Okhotsk, and on December 22, 1 786,
an Imperial order decreed the sending from
Kronstadt of a circumnavigating expedition to
the American coast "for the safeguarding of our
land, discovered by Russian navigators.” The
expedition's commander, Mulovskii, had govern¬
mental powers, and he was to claim the Amer¬
ican coast from Nootka on Vancouver Island in
the east to the Near Islands in the west. Ironi¬
cally, it was the intelligence obtained at Unalaska
by Martinez from Potap Zaikov about the coming
of this navy squadron that triggered Spanish
determination to claim Nootka, where Spain
seized the British merchant ships. As a result,
the British moved against Spain and gained, by
1 790, sovereignty over the coast of what is now
British Columbia. But Mulovskii's squadron never
sailed. The war with Turkey broke out anew,
and in 1787 Sweden and Russia were, also, once
again at war. The ships sailed to fight the
Swedish Navy.

Consideration of international politics, how¬
ever, was not the sole motivating power in the
plan to establish the governmental presence on
the American continent. In 1783, Grigorii She-
likhov equipped three vessels for Alaskan trade
and sailed to America. For Shelikhov, trade was
not a sole aim. He dreamed of an empire on the
American continent, from Prince William Sound
to Bering Strait, where settlers would build cities,
cathedrals, and schools. He dreamed of a land
economically self-supporting, producing its own
food, building its own ships, developing indus¬
tries that would make Alaska an economic center
for the world. Thus, Shelikhov differed essen¬
tially from the other fur-trading companies op¬
erating at that time in Alaska. His goal was not
trade with the natives but permanent settlement.
For his first base, Shelikhov chose the most
populous and hitherto (because of its military
strength) largely bypassed island of Kodiak. The
conquest was swift and brutal. At one stroke,
going in force, Shelikhov gained a foothold that
was the key to expansion to the continent. By

1 786, he had fortified outposts on Afognak Island
and the Kenai Peninsula.

Word of the brutality of the conquest and
Aleut complaints about abuses had reached St.
Petersburg, and the government was concerned.
Billings, whose squadron was to support Mulov¬
skii, received orders to investigate as well as to
make the presence of the navy felt by the British.
Since 1785 the British had been sending more
and more heavily armed and large-capacity
merchant vessels to the North Pacific and were
flooding the Chinese market with sea otter pelts
via Canton. In 1 786 alone, nine British vessels
were present from Copper Island to Prince
William Sound. Billings was to intercept any of
the British vessels that were privateers with
Swedish letters of marque, especially the brig
Mercury, which was said to have raided the
central Aleut villages. He was also to hold an
inquiry into Aleut complaints, particularly about
Shelikhov's actions on Kodiak.

Shelikhov was able, however, with support
from the governor of Siberia, in whose view
Shelikhov's actions were more than justified by
reasons of state, to beat the charges. The fact
that he was also a builder mattered. Shelikhov
established the first school on Kodiak by 1786.
He instituted the first agricultural experiments
and imported cattle and poultry, and successfully
petitioned and financially supported the first
ecclesiastical mission to Alaska. The clergy ar¬
rived on Kodiak Island in 1794. Here, Aleksandr
Baranov, hired by Shelikhov in 1 790 to become
the manager of the Kodiak District, which en¬
compassed the entire Kodiak archipelago, Cook
Inlet, Prince William Sound, the Alaska Penin¬
sula, and the Shumagin Islands, was by this time
an absolute ruler. The clergy and Baranov were
soon at loggerheads over the issue of Aleut
rights. The clergy vigorously protested the eco¬
nomic exploitation of the Kodiak population and
social abuses Baranov permitted his men. This
stance was one of the major reasons why the
Orthodox Church gained strength and adherents
so that today it is perceived as a native institu¬
tion, the primary marker of Aleut identity.

Aleut rights, however, had little importance
for Baranov. While Shelikhov issued instructions
for expansion to the Bering Strait, using the
Pribilof Islands as a platform for the thrust in
that direction, Baranov faced more immediate
priorities. These priorities were dictated not only
by the growing competition of British and Amer¬
ican sea otter traders but also by the ever
growing need for supplies. In Europe, Napoleon
was on the march, and the difficulties of Russian
merchants in Alaska were not on the govern¬
ment's urgent list. Baranov had to rely on his
own resources. He felt that expansion east and

south, to the Columbia River, to California, to
Hawaii, was imperative if the colony were to
survive.

When Shelikhov died in 1796, Baranov, with
the support of Shelikhov's widow, Nataliia, did
what he felt to be absolutely necessary: he
expanded into the Tlingit territory previously
explored and claimed in 1786. In fact, at least
one of the bronze crests marking the land as
Russian territory had been placed there.

That year Baranov established a settlement
at Yakutat and soon thereafter on the island of
Sitka (Baranov Island). Both locations were fa¬
vorite stopping places of the British and Boston¬
ian traders, and the choice was not random.
Baranov wanted the Russian presence clearly
demonstrated. In this effort, he relied mainly on
the native force he recruited, by fair means and
foul, of Koniags from the Kodiak archipelago,
the Chugach from Prince William Sound, and
men of the eastern Alaska Peninsula. The num¬
ber of Russians was minuscule.

To achieve his aims, Baranov resorted to
impressment. Almost all able-bodied Kodiak males
were dragooned into service as hunters and
warriors, paddling to the Tlingit territory in
parties composed of several hundred two-hatch
baidarkas. At Prince William Sound, these parties
were joined by the Chugach, who anticipated
revenge on their ancient enemies, the Tlingit.
Armed with their traditional weapons, led by
their own chiefs, but under overall command of
individual Russians, they hunted sea otter for
trade and sea mammals for food and, according
to Tlingit folklore, raided Tlingit parties and
villages. Later, these raids would extend as far
south as San Diego and Baja California, when
Kodiak and Chugach hunters were hired out by
Baranov to American skippers for small salaries
and a share of the sea otter take for the Russian
American Company.

Back home, the absence of the men con¬
demned the Kodiak villages to untold suffering.
Food shortages were severe, skins for clothing
and other household needs became almost non¬
existent. More and more the population had to
rely for relief on Baranov's largess, such as it
was. Women worked for meager recompense as
fish processors and sewers of clothing needed
for Baranov's "army.'' Old men and young boys
were sent out to take bird skins from which the
women made parkas issued to their men. Despair
reigned in the villages. It was this exploitation
that aroused the wrath of the clergy, from Monk
German (St. Herman of Alaska) to Archimandrite
Ioasaf, Head of Mission, and later of Hiermonk
Gideon, sent to Alaska by the Synod of the
Orthodox Church. It was this system of impress¬
ment that moved navy officers, from Lisianskii

80. "Portrait of Toyon (Chief)

Katlian and his Wife"

Mikhail Tikhanov, 1818: RIPS A 2116
Katlian (Kalyaan) was the military
leader of the Kiks.adi clan of the
Tlingits in their battles with the Rus¬
sians in 1802 and 1804. He wears a
spruce root crest hat, Russian medal,
Athapaskan skin trousers, and a
woven ceremonial blanket in the pre-
19th century "geometric" style (see
fig. 284). In the background are
Golovnin's sloop Kamchatka and the
fortress at Sitka.

in 1804—05 to Golovnin in 1810 and 1817, to
denounce Baranov to the government. But in
the meantime, Baranov's energy and resource¬
fulness made possible the establishment of a
Russian outpost deep in the Tlingit territory, at
first with the consent of Tlingit leadership.

Before long, however, the initially peaceful
relations between Baranov and the Tlingit be¬
came those of armed confrontation. The reasons
were many and complex. Cultural miscommun-
ication was, indubitably, at work. A weir built
by Russians on a salmon stream at Yakutat
interfered with the salmon run upstream, some¬
thing that the Tlingit did not foresee when they
granted Baranov permission to build a post there.
At Sitka, already in 1797 and 1798, parties of
Kodiak natives were taking 200 sea otter skins
per season, which the Tlingit themselves wanted
for trade with the British. The latter were not
too pleased, and some leaders objected to the
establishment of a permanent Russian base in
1799, when Baranov arrived with three vessels
and a fleet of Kodiak Aleuts consisting of 550
baidarkas, to found the Redoubt of St. Michael
the Archangel (Old Sitka). However, Baranov
met with the senior local Tlingit chiefs and
concluded an agreement. In return for permis¬
sion to establish a settlement, he was to trade
with them and provide protection against ene¬
mies. Unfortunately, the Tlingit did not under¬
stand that Baranov would not trade in firearms
as the British and Americans were doing, nor
that he would not supply any rum.

83. Baranov's Chain Mail Shirt

Russian: NMAH 237848
Baranov fought in several bloody en¬
gagements with Tlingit war parties in
the course of his efforts to expand
Russian American Company opera¬
tions into southeastern Alaska: at
Prince William Sound in 1792 and
1799, and at Sitka in 1804. He pre¬
sented his chain mail shirt to Tlingit
chief Naawushkeitl as a gesture of
peace, probably in March 1800.

81. War Helmet
Tlingit: MAE 633-8
This helmet was brought back to
Russia by the Krusenstern-Lisianskii
expedition (Lisiansky 1814:plate I); it
had been obtained by Baranov when
destroying Tlingit villages in retalia¬
tion for the 1802 Sitka massacre.
Tlingit helmets often represented
fierce human faces. The upper ridge
of this helmet was originally crowned
with a strip of fur.

In the fall of 1 799, Baranov sent back to Kodiak
the Aleut fleet and all vessels but his own small
Olga, leaving only 60 baidarkas — 120 men — to
provision the post with fish and sea mammals.
On the way back, over a hundred Kodiak natives
died from shellfish poisoning in Peril Strait. In
the wake of this accident, the air was thick with
suspicion of witchcraft. The Tlingit expected to
be accused of causing the deaths. Indeed, Kodiak
natives are said to have killed at least ten
important Tlingit men, probably in retaliation
for this "witchcraft-caused'' misfortune. Tension
grew. A meeting between Baranov and Tlingit
leaders in 1800, when Baranov presented the
head of the Kiks.adi clan with a chain mail shirt,
seemed to relieve mutual suspicions. But the
respite from tension was short-lived. From the
south, via the Haida, British and Americans
offered supplies of weapons, firearms and pow-

82. Painted Hide Armor
Tlingit: MAE 2454-10
Tunics of thick, doubled layers of
tanned hide were the principle armor
of the Tlingit, and effectively pro¬
tected warriors even from Russian
musket balls. The painted design is a
raven crest. A human face between
the bird's ears probably represents
the tail, while wings extend from the
sides of its beak and a large design
at the bottom is probably its body.

der, even cannon, should the Tlingit mount an
effort to oust the Russians. In fact, contemporary
Russian sources considered the outbreak of hos¬
tilities between the Russians and the Tlingit a
direct result of British and American meddling.
Whatever the cause, whatever the trigger of the
conflict, when it erupted the Tlingit initially had
the upper hand.

In spite of the existing tension, Medvednikov,
in charge at the post of St. Michael the Archangel
at Sitka, felt himself secure. In the spring of
1802, he dispatched most of his men to Frederic
Sound to hunt sea otters. Others were sent out

to hunt sea lions and seals for food. Only 21
men remained at the unfinished fort, with its
palisade not yet completed. On Sunday, June
18, 1802, most of the men were fishing, hunting,
or resting. About 12 men were in the main
building when the Tlingits attacked in force.
Several American sailors are said to have fought
on the Tlingit side. Tlingit leader Katlian led the
attack. There were few survivors. The fort was
burned. The sea otter skins bundled up in the
storage loft were taken by the Tlingit, but they
did not keep the skins for long. British Captain
Barber sailed into the harbor before smoke from
the burning buildings had cleared. He threatened
to execute the Tlingit leaders who eagerly boarded
his ship unless all Russian sea otter skins were
surrendered. In the meantime, near Angoon, a
party commanded by Urbanov was attacked by
the Tlingit and almost wiped out.

Baranov, however, was determined not to give
up. In 1804, he, with the aid of the unexpectedly
arrived navy vessel Neva under Lisianskii, de¬
feated the Sitka Tlingit and reestablished his
outpost at a new location, the modern city of
Sitka. However, in 1805, perhaps in response,
the Tlingit destroyed the Russian outpost at
Yakutat. It was never rebuilt. Just the same, the
Russian presence in Tlingit territory became an
established fact and was never seriously chal¬
lenged again. Sitka became the center of Russian
administration in Alaska and the main port on
the North Pacific until the late 19th century.

The establishment of New Sitka, the Novo-
Arkhangel'sk, was a turning point in the Russian-
Tlingit relations. A kind of symbiosis eventually
developed, in which trade played an important
part. The Tlingit supplied the settlement with
food, fish and game, and after they and the
Haida learned vegetable gardening from the

ir:. '?P3K\v'-

Cf- < •• . ~ r

;-/4 (olx 8m f i * i- >: o i? t •■4?™*'. "i# **"&’

'sfi/hio i /)•*■<■■

')c< p

0ykr

Russians, they even provided a steady source
of potatoes to the city. By 1818, almost 1,500
Tlingit occupied their old village site, abandoned
in 1804, directly under the palisade of the
Russian fort.

Baranov's activities as colonizer were greatly
facilitated in 1 799 by the granting of a monopoly
for exploitation of American possessions to She-
likhov's heirs by Emperor Paul I, who reversed
his mother's antimonopoly policy. This elimi¬
nated domestic Russian competition and greatly
strengthened Baranov's hand. The Russian
American Company, so named in 1799, became
the sole economic power and representative of
Russian government in the colony. In 1812,
Baranov expanded into California, where Fort
Ross was founded, again with the aid of Kodiak
natives, the Chugach, and the Kenai Peninsula
inhabitants; but his attempt to establish a foot¬
hold in Hawaii failed, largely because of the
incompetence of his agent there and the lack of
cooperation by the Russian Navy (Barratt 1981).

Beginning with the 1803-06 Krusenstern-Lis-
ianskii expedition, Russian naval ships were
calling in Alaska with ever-increasing frequency.
The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1814 per¬
mitted regular sailings from the navy base of
Kronstadt around the world to Alaska and the
Pacific Ocean, even to Antarctica (Ivashintsov
1980). The commanders had wide-ranging in¬
structions for inspection of conditions, and their
reports of mistreatment of the locals, predomi¬
nantly eastern Aleutian and Kodiak peoples,
eventually resulted in Baranov's removal in 1818.
Beginning that year, the governor of Russian
America was always a high-ranking navy officer.
Serving as a manager for the Russian American
Company, he was also responsible for imple¬
menting state policies in administering the re-

gion and for relations with foreign powers who
claimed interest in Alaskan waters.

The Russian American Company operated
under an Imperial charter. When the first mo¬
nopoly charter granted by Emperor Paul expired,
the second charter was negotiated in 1824 for
the following 20 years, and then a third. The
fourth charter was in the process of being
negotiated when the Imperial government began
discussion with the United States about transfer
of Alaska to U.S. sovereignty. With each charter,
the government assigned to the company ever-
increasing social service duties in return for the
sole right to exploit Alaska's economic resources.
The company was obligated to maintain the
church, schools, and medical services. Beginning
in 1818, smallpox vaccination was attempted.
When the 1836—39 pandemic struck Alaska, a
massive effort to vaccinate the native population
was made. But it was not accepted largely

84. Novo- Arkhangelsk Harbour,
September 21, 1827
Unfinished watercolor sketch by Pavel
Mikhailov. SRM PM 29010

85. "Inhabitants of the Aleutian
Islands"

Louis Choris, 1816-17. AMHA
4.81.68.9

Choris depicts the hunter in tradi¬
tional garb, while the woman wears
Europeanized clothing, braids, and an
Orthodox cross.

86. Gutskin Cape in Russian Style
Aleut or Koniag: MAE 2868-76
This cape, dyed blue-black and cut to
approximate the form of a naval
greatcoat, was probably made for a
Russian officer or merchant captain in
the late 18th or early 19th century.

because the native theories of disease causation
were directly opposite to the practice of vacci¬
nation or inoculation. The Russians were pow¬
erless to prevent the spread of disease, which
resulted not only in the great reduction of
aboriginal population but also in the belief that
Russians deliberately introduced smallpox among
the aboriginals.

Furbearer conservation measures were imple¬
mented by 1828. Only a strictly limited number
of sea otter skins in each district was bought
from the Aleuts per year, and the sea otter
banks were hunted in rotation (Hooper 1897).
Fur sealing was also strictly regulated. The
practice of harvesting nonbreeding males and
of periodic harvest stoppages was introduced at
this time. Aleuts were paid for the skins accord¬

ing to a fixed price schedule. Those who worked
for the company by voluntary agreement were
paid wages regulated by an established pay
scale (Khlebnikov 1979, 1985).

In any event, under the new managerial prac¬
tices, the rights of native peoples under direct
Russian control in the Aleutian and Kodiak ar¬
chipelagoes, the Pribilof Islands, Cook Inlet, and
Prince William Sound were protected as they
were considered Imperial citizens with the civil
status equated to that of the free peasants in
Russia. Education and social advancement were
open to natives and especially to people of mixed
ancestry (Huggins 1981). A native middle class,
the bulk of whom were creoles (people who
could claim Russian ancestry in the male line,
no matter how remote), was emerging. A num¬
ber of natives who occupied positions of respon¬
sibility within the Russian establishment were
automatically classified as creoles. There are
cases when an Alaskan native, educated in
Russia and occupying a managerial position,
became first a creole, then a ''man'' (i.e., a
Russian of relatively low rank), and some ended
as members of the gentry. Such was the case
of Kassian Shaiashnikov, who managed the en¬
tire Pribilof Island fur sealing operating for the
Russian American Company from 1829 to his
death in the early 1860s; or of the Kashevarov
brothers, some of whom went to Russia in 1867
or earlier, as navy officers and state bureaucrats,
while others, those who became clergymen,
remained in Alaska.

Many Alaskans of native origin explored the
Bering Sea coast and Alaskan interior for the
Russian American Company from the end of the
18th century to the 1860s. Petr Korsanovskii
explored the coasts between the Nushagak and
Kuskokwim rivers in 1818 and 1819 and the
route from Iliamna Lake to the Mulchatna River.
Andrei Ustiugov, an Aleut from Unalaska, in
1819 charted Bristol Bay shores and named
Hagemeister Island. Afanasii Klimovskii. in 1819,
explored the Copper River. Andrei Glazunov
performed the incredible trek from St. Michael
via the Unalakleet River to Anvik, from there
following the Innoko River to the Kuskokwim,
and ascended the Stony River in an attempt to
reach Cook Inlet. Semeon and Ivan Lukin, Petr
Malakhov, Petr Kolmakov, and others traveled
widely in the interior. Aleksandr Kashevarov
explored the coast between Pastolik and the
Yukon and the Yukon Delta itself in 1834. In
1838, he led an expedition to the Polar coast of
Alaska, sailing in a baidara (umiak) as far as
Point Barrow. Ivan Lukin probably reached the
Tanana Valley via the upper Kuskokwim and
traded in that direction in the 1840s. In the
1860s, he traveled to Fort Yukon to report on

the Hudson's Bay Company's activities there to
the governor.

Following the Crimean War and the Opium
Wars of the 1850s, which resulted in the virtual
collapse of the Chinese market for furs, the
Russian American Company made an attempt
to diversify the Alaskan economy. Commercial
fishing, ice industry, and coal extraction were
attempted. None of these enterprises were eco¬
nomically successful, at least not to the degree
desired. Fishing, in the absence of canning
technology, with salting as the only method of
preservation, met with limited success. The coal
industry faced the competition of coal from the
Vancouver Island area, which was cheaper to
transport to the newly developing U.S. ports of
San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland.

By this time, the native population of south¬
western Alaska, the Aleuts and the Tanaina
(Kenaitsy) and Koniags and Yupik-speaking Aleuts
from Bristol Bay to Prince William Sound, were
participating to some extent in a wage-earning
economy, though subsistence activities by ab¬
original means continued to predominate. Polit¬
ically, they were integrated into the Russian
Imperial order, retaining, however, local dispute-
settlement powers. The Russian American Com¬
pany administration did not formally intrude in
the village life. The Yupik of the Yukon-Kuskok-
wim drainage, the interior Athapaskans, and the
Tlingit systematically participated in the Russian
fur trade network while retaining their local
autonomy and political independence. A rela¬
tively significant segment of the population was
exposed to the concepts of education and the
availability of public health services, such as
smallpox vaccination (the smallpox epidemic of
1863 was checked in Alaska). The clergy devised
alphabets for Aleut, Alutiiq, Tlingit, and Yupik
languages. Literacy in native languages was
developing and native written literature was
emerging.

Toward the end of the Russian period, the
relationship with the native populations followed
an established pattern: since Russia did not
desire Russian settlement in the territory, dim¬
inution or displacement of the population was
not the aim. The successful management of the
territory, and the demands of profitable trade,
dictated the need for amicable relations. The
native peoples were considered citizens of the
empire, and those groups who were under
Russian dominance since the 18th century formed
the backbone of the Russian establishment in
Alaska.

The end of the Russian regime, in 1867, came
as a shock to the Aleuts, the Koniags, the Tlingits,
the Kenai Peninsula Athapaskans, and the Alaska
Peninsula Yupik. As one Aleut expressed it in a

conversation, "Just as we have learned how to
deal with the Russians, when we understood
them and they understood us, we had to face a
new game with totally different rules. It has
taken us almost another century and a half to
learn these new rules.”

Most of the Russians left Alaska following the
transfer of the territory to the USA. Most of the
few who remained became paupers (Cracroft
1981): their property rights were not respected
by the American settlers, who came to Sitka in

87. Othodox Traveling Icon
Even: AMNH 70-5796
The images of the Mother of God and
Christ displaying the gospel are of
paper, probably clipped from a Rus¬
sian religious calendar. This Siberian
icon is equipped with a belt hook and
leather case.

droves, waiting at Sitka aboard ship even before
the U.S. commissioner who was to accept the
territory had arrived (U.S. Congress 1868). On
the very day that the Imperial flag came down,
these men staked out every lot in Sitka that had
no building on it. Under General Davis, for ten
years, the Russian and creole populations were
treated as a defeated remnant in a conquered
territory. Few were able to obtain even middle-
level employment. The creole became the half-
breed. Men married to Alaskan women were
held in contempt, and eventually they, and their
descendants, became absorbed into native com¬
munities, as natives. The color bar went up. The
Tlingit, who attempted to assert their indepen¬
dence, which they were able to maintain under
the Russian regime, were taught submission by
the military, culminating in the U.S. Navy bom¬
bardment of Wrangell and Angoon.

The sea otter, hunted by private entrepre¬
neurs under the laissez-faire economic policy of
the age without any restraint, by the 1880s was
on the verge of extinction (Hooper 1897). The
canning industry made the territory a commer¬
cial fishing paradise. The gold rush brought
thousands of seekers for the riches of Eldorado.

88. Woven Grass Purse
Aleut: MAE 2888-93
The double-headed eagle emblem is
here incorporated into the finely
woven design of a small Aleut purse,
along with the Russian inscription
"His Imperial Highness." The em¬
blem and inscription may have been
copied from a document.

89. Triptych Icon

Russian from Aleutian Islands:

NMAH 25819.130
The central panel of this brass trip¬
tych portrays Saints Julitta and Cyri-
cus, to whom prayers are directed for
the family and for the health of sick
children. Flanking portraits include
St. Peter, Michael the Archangel, the
Archangel Gabriel, and others. The
icon had a cord attached for suspen¬
sion around the neck.

Sitka, the former Imperial capital of Novo-
Arkhangel'sk, became a backwater. To the new¬
comers, for whom Alaska was the last frontier,
Russian America was simply irrelevant. For the
native peoples of southwestern and southeastern
Alaska, on the other hand, the memory of the
Russian presence soon came to serve as a model
of intercultural communication and integration.
This attitude crystallized around the one Russian
institution that remained, and grew, while much
of the Russian American heritage has disap¬
peared, was suppressed, or was forgotten: the
Orthodox Church.

Today, the Orthodox Church in Alaska is
perceived by many native peoples, as well as
by outsiders, to be a native institution. Aleuts
of the Aleutian archipelago and the Pribilof
Islands, the people of Kodiak Island, the Alaska
Peninsula, Prince William Sound, the Tanaina of
the Kenai Peninsula and Lake Iliamna— Lake Clark
areas, as well as a majority of the Yupik peoples
of the Yukon-Kuskokwim and Nushagak river
drainages, constitute the bulk of the Orthodox
population of Alaska. A majority of the clergy
are Alaskans.

The conversion to Orthodoxy was swift, in
spite of the fact that the Orthodox Church does
not engage in aggressive proselytizing. In the
early period of Russian advance into Alaska,
conversions were individual. The faith was spread
by laymen, the fur hunters who brought with
them aboard their ships the symbols of their
faith, built chapels, and regularly conducted
prayer services in which any Aleuts present
participated. Ties of god-parenthood were es¬
tablished between individual Russian hunters
and Aleuts, ties strengthened by name ex¬
changes and name-giving and by the house
education provided by some of the godfathers
to their new godchildren. Some took their god¬
sons to Kamchatka and Okhotsk, even to Irkutsk,
where the young Aleuts lived in their godfathers'
households and went to local schools. When
these young men returned home to Alaska, they
themselves became agents of change, spreading
the new faith. The first village chapel in the
eastern Aleutians was built by an Aleut leader
of Umnak in 1806, as was the first chapel in the
Krenitzin Islands in 1844.

The early attempt at systematic mission ac¬
tivity begun in 1794 was short lived. It ended
when the Head of Mission, newly consecrated
Bishop of Alaska Ioasaf (Bolotov), drowned in
the wreck of the Phoenix in 1799, together with
his entourage and the staff of the seminary that
he hoped to establish on Kodiak. However, under
his direction the first church in Alaska, the
Church of the Holy Resurrection, was built in
1796 at St. Paul (modern Kodiak). After his

death, the lay brother Herman, a man of excep¬
tional piety, became the focal point of Orthodoxy
in the Kodiak area. After 1808, he built a retreat
on Spruce Island where he maintained a school
and gave refuge to Aleuts, men and women,
who fled to him from oppression by Baranov's
henchmen. Loved by the Koniags, he won the
admiration and respect of the Russians also,
influencing even high-ranking navy officers who
met him. He died in 1837, among his people,
and after his death his memory was venerated
even more than the man was during his lifetime.
Already by the turn of the 19th century, he was
considered locally to be a saint, and he became
acknowledged as a saint by the Orthodox Church
in 1970, as St. Herman of Alaska. He is revered
today as patron saint of Alaska, as protector of
the native peoples, and as the founder of Ortho¬
doxy on the North American continent.

As far as actual mass conversion of the native
population to Orthodoxy, the original 1794 mis¬
sion had little effect, if only numbers are con¬
sidered. As a model, on the other hand, it is
remembered to this day. The monks were ex¬
pected to convert by example of their lives, not
by proselytizing. In fact, they were instructed
to "speak only when asked and to remember at
all times that they are guests in somebody else's
house." But the faith continued to spread by
word of mouth, predominantly indirectly through
laymen — and that was successful, so much so
that by 1819 parish priests were needed in
several areas of Alaska. That year, the first
parish priest to serve the Orthodox population,
Father Sokolov, arrived at Sitka and the Church
of St. Michael the Archangel was built there. In
1824, Father Ioann Veniaminov arrived to serve
the eastern Aleutian parish and by 1826 built
the Church of the Ascension of Christ on Una-
laska. Father Frumentii Mordovskii came to serve
the parish of Kodiak in 1824. In 1828, Iakov
Netsvetov, of Aleut origin, educated at the sem¬
inary in Irkutsk, came to serve the western
Aleutian parish and built the Church of St.
Nicholas on the island of Atka.

True missionary activities commenced only in
the 1840s when Ioann Veniaminov returned to
Alaska as the first ruling bishop. Clergy from
Russia came in increasing numbers during Ven¬
iaminov' s tenure as bishop, but the native clergy
was growing also. After 1867, the majority of

the Russian clergy left, and for many years it
was the native clergymen who maintained the
legacy of the Orthodox faith. Often, these Alas¬
kans held their ground in the face of hostility
and even persecution by predominantly Prot¬
estant missionaries enjoying U.S. governmental
support. Church lands and property were often
seized or "leased" by commercial interests with¬
out due recompense. Even in Sitka the clergy
were put under pressure to cede the cathedral
lands in the center of town and remove them¬
selves to the outskirts of Sitka, but here this
pressure was successfully resisted. Church schools
were closed or put under severe pressure. Yet,
the clergy persevered.

Today Orthodox churches are maintained or
rebuilt in villages where they were destroyed,
and in some communities where the dominant
religious affiliation is non-Orthodox, Orthodox
groups are revived. St. Herman Theological
Seminary operates in Kodiak, training clergymen
and lay readers not only as church workers but
also in community leadership and survival skills,
providing education in health aid and crisis
intervention. Once thought slated to disappear,
following the demise of Russian government
support, the Orthodox Church in Alaska remains
strong. It is supported solely by the grass roots,
by the local Orthodox population. A magnificent
Cathedral of St. Innocent of Irkutsk is being built
in the city of Anchorage, with all Orthodox
Alaskans contributing to the effort. If anything,
the number of Orthodox is growing, with a
number of Americans of Anglo-European origin
joining the church. And through the church,
Russian names are perpetuated, as church names
and as surnames: Lukin, Malakhov, Chumovitskii,
Larionov, are now Alaskan American names.

As Alaska has come of age, as a state of the
Union, her people have become concerned with
her history. Russian Alaska is an integral part
of that history. Interest in the Russian heritage
is growing. Architectural monuments of the
Russian era are restored; documents of the era
are collected, preserved, and translated into
English; and the surviving Orthodox Church art
and music are respected and admired. Through¬
out the nation there is the awakening of aware¬
ness that Russian America is part not only of
Alaskan but also of the nation's history, a heri¬
tage to be remembered and treasured.

90. Notched Calendar
Even: MAE 147-4

Several methods were used by Alas¬
kan and Siberian Native converts to
Orthodoxy to keep the religious cal¬
endar. On this ivory calendar from
Siberia each notch represents one
day, with feast days marked by spe¬
cial symbols.

Treasures by the Neva: The Russian Collections

G. I. Dzeniskevich and L. P. Pavlinskaia

91. Museum of Anthropology and
Ethnography

Founded with the personal "Kunstka-
mera" (art cabinet) of Peter the Great
in 1714 in St. Petersburg (Lenin¬
grad), the Museum of Anthropology
and Ethnography is the oldest mu¬
seum in the USSR and has been the
official repository for the anthropol¬
ogy collections of the Russian Acad¬
emy of Sciences since 1824 (Stanyu-
kovich 1970).

Originally housed in a small
"Chamber of Curiosities/' the mu¬
seum moved to its present location —
a site chosen by Peter I on the Neva
River — with the completion of a new
museum building in 1728. The mu¬
seum is part of the N.N. Miklukho-
Maklai Institute of Ethnography of
the Academy of Sciences of the
USSR. In addition to holding other
famous early collections from expedi¬
tions around the world, the mu¬
seum's American Department houses
the Russian America collections uti¬
lized in the Crossroads of Continents
exhibition.

The Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology
and Ethnography, under the Soviet Academy of
Sciences, derives from the original Kunstkamera,
the first Russian museum, created by Peter the
First in St. Petersburg, then the capital of Russia.
In 1728 a special building was erected on the
banks of the Neva for the new museum, which
displayed not only ethnographic collections but
also biological curiosities. Like many early mu¬
seums of the world, it was originally a museum
of natural history.

As the first state museum of Russia, the St.
Petersburg Kunstkamera played a fundamental
role in the development of the natural and social
sciences, including ethnology, physical anthro¬
pology, and archeology, as well as in national
education and museology. The affiliation of the
Kunstkamera to the Russian Academy of Sci¬
ences in 1724 was a major step: it allowed the
Kunstkamera collections to be used for scientific
purposes and provided a sounder basis for mu¬
seum collecting and museum exhibiting meth¬
ods.

Thanks to the growth of the sciences in Russia,
in the 1830s, 100 years after its founding, the

museum holdings had increased greatly, so that
it became necessary to divide the Kunstkamera
into specialized departments for both research
and exhibition. In the reorganization that, ac¬
cordingly, took place in 1831, seven independent
academic museums were created, one of them
being the museum of ethnography, which was
named the Peter the Great Museum of Anthro¬
pology and Ethnography (the MAE). The new
museum remained in the former St. Petersburg
Kunstkamera building.

Towards the end of the 19th century, the
MAE became the center of ethnographic work
in Russia. Great scientists like A. Sjogren, M. A.
Kastren, A. F. Middendorf, L. I. Shrenk, N. N.
Miklukho-Maklai, V. V. Radlow, S. F. Oldenburg,
D. K. Zelenin, L. la. Sternberg, W. G. Bogoras,
D. A. Klements, and others worked within its
walls.

Since its beginnings, the acquisition of collec¬
tions at the Kunstkamera has had a governmental
character. Systematic collections resulted from
special recommendations and instructions given
to scientific expeditions or to individual scholars
conducting fieldwork. In the 18th and 19th
centuries, especially, major scientific expedi¬
tions were organized by the Academy of Sci¬
ences, aiming for thorough study of the natural
history and populations of various parts of the
globe. The museum collections from the cultures
of Siberia and North America are among the
most valuable results of these expeditions.

The MAE owns more than 11,000 artifacts
from American Native peoples. This collection
was acquired during two centuries, but the most
brilliant chapters of the history were the 19th-
century collecting activities among the cultures
of northwestern North America, Eskimo, Aleut,
Alaskan Athapaskan, and Tlingit.

Numerous Russian navigators, travelers, and
scholars took part in the collecting of artifacts
from the American continent. Newspapers and
magazines at the beginning of the 18th century
already mentioned American ethnographic pieces
in Russia, but the brevity of early museum
documentation makes it difficult to identify any
of these artifacts that may still survive. Among

the early collections, we have reliable documen¬
tation only for pieces acquired by the museum
after the 1780s. An example is the collection
from the 1785—94 expedition of Capt. N. I. Bill¬
ings and G. A. Sarychev to Northeast Asia, the
Bering Strait, the American Northwest Coast,
and the Aleutian Islands. All the artifacts from
their collection come from the Koniag Eskimo of
Kodiak Island. Other accessions from America
(e.g., MAE 2520, Tlingit cloaks; and MAE 505),
acquired by the MAE from M. K. Boehm, gov¬
ernor of Kamchatka, have been assumed by
some to have been given him by Captain Cook's
expedition in the 1780s.

The most complete and precious holdings of
the American section of the MAE represent the
cultures of the Aleut, Alaskan and Koniag Es¬
kimo, Tlingit, Alaskan Athapaskan, and Califor¬
nia Indians. These were collected mainly in the
first half of the 19th century by members of the
Russian American Company and by the Russian
navigators around the world.

The first Russian circumnavigation was ac¬
complished by the ships Neva and Nadezhda
("Hope'') between 1803 and 1806 under the
command of I. S. Krusenstern and Iu. F. Lisian-
skii. Among the 100 ethnographic pieces do¬
nated to the museum by Lisianskii after his
voyage, a significant number are North Ameri¬
can clothing and utensils, means of transporta¬
tion, craftwork, and religious objects (Tlingit,
Athapaskan, and Eskimo from the Kodiak Island
area). From this collection, the exhibition dis¬
plays a Chugach Eskimo bird-shaped wooden
bowl (MAE 536-4, fig. 390) and a Koniag Eskimo
ivory figurine (MAE 699-1, fig. 92).

Some of the artifacts collected during this
expedition were donated to the Museum of the
Admiralty Department (later called the Navy
Museum), which also acquired many objects
from other maritime expeditions and Russian
seamen. After 1930 all these were transferred
to the MAE, but the collectors and the proven¬
ience of the pieces were by then impossible to
identify precisely (MAE 4104, 4105, 4270, 5795,
5801, 5803). It is known that accession MAE
633, represented in the exhibition by a Tlingit
helmet (MAE 633-8, fig. 81), a Chugach Eskimo
spruce-root hat (MAE 633-18, fig. 408), and two
Aleut pouches (MAE 633-12, 14, fig. 252), which
was originally in the Admiralty Museum, was
donated by I. S. Krusenstern after his circum¬
navigation of the world.

In 1817—18 Capt. V. M. Golovnin completed
a voyage around the world on the sloop Kam¬
chatka. He visited the Aleutians, Kodiak Island,
and Novo- Arkhangelsk (Sitka), and again the
Kunstkamera received a generous donation of
objects from North American native cultures.

The exhibit shows a Chugach spruce-root hat
(MAE 539- 1 , fig. 206) from Golovnin's collection.

The next Russian voyage around the world
was completed on the sloop Seniavin under F. P.
Litke (Liitke), resulting in numerous collections
that were all put under the management of the
Academy of Sciences. The Tlingit collection
(woven hats, wooden carved bowls, two daggers,
and others) of this series was donated to the
Kunstkamera, as well as an Eskimo collection of
clothing, utensils, and ornaments.

Most of the collections of the first half of the
1 9th century were in one way or another related
to the Russian American Company. For instance
A. F. Kashevarov was from the 1830s to the
1860s in command of various company ships,
sailing between Sitka, Kodiak, and Petropav-
lovsk. Being born himself in Alaska, the son of
a Russian teacher and an Aleut woman, he loved
Alaskan people and knew and valued the native
culture. He gave two collections to the MAE.
One of them, from the Alaskan Northwest Coast,
includes four Tlingit ceremonial goat-horn spoons,
two of which are shown in the exhibit (MAE
518-la and 1 b, fig. 393), and a suit of Athapaskan
deerskin clothing.

Another famous navigator, I. Arkhimandritov,
also an Alaskan creole (part native, part Russian),
was in charge of the general direction of the
company. He described the coastline of the Kenai
Peninsula, Kodiak Island, and other islands along
the North American coast. In 1857 he gave the
museum a collection of Aleut masks, one of
which can be seen in the exhibit (MAE 538-2,
fig. 440).

Among the artifacts donated to the museum
by the mining engineer P. P. Doroshin after he
conducted geological research in Alaska (he
discovered seams of coal on the Kenai Peninsula,
among other finds), the exhibition presents a
Tlingit wooden bowl (MAE 337-18, fig. 245) and
a series of objects from the MAE accession 2448.

Among the collectors of North American ar¬
tifacts in the MAE, the place of honor is deserved
by 1. G. Voznesenskii. In 1839 he was sent to
America especially to expand the collections of
the Academy museums. The Russian Academy
of Sciences provided him with careful instruc¬
tions for collecting ethnographic artifacts to¬
gether with a list of objects needed by the
museum. Voznesenskii spent almost ten years
in America, and the results of his work surpassed
all expectations. He brought back altogether
more than 1,000 North American artifacts. Thanks
to his great talents as a collector, his industry,
and his honesty, he was able to collect the most
precious ethnographic material from the Aleut,
Western Eskimo, Koniag, Alaskan coastal Atha¬
paskan, Tlingit, Haida, and Indians of California.

92. Iurii Lisianskii
Koniag Eskimo: MAE 669-1
Bering Sea Eskimo: MAE 2938-2
In 1803-6 the Russian government
sent out an expedition under the
command of 1. S. Krusenstern to ex¬
plore the feasibility of supplying Rus¬
sian America by sea rather than by
the difficult overland and sea route
through Siberia and the North Pacific.
Iurii Lisianskii, captain of the second
ship, Neva, arrived in Alaska just in
time to help secure Baranov's reentry
into Sitka in 1804 (p. 77). Lisianskii
was also instrumental in securing
more humane conditions for natives
working for the fur traders. His re¬
ports contain valuable observations
on native life and culture, and he ob¬
tained and published ethnographic
collections that are among the earli¬
est for the region. They include this
carving of a seated high-status Kon¬
iag Eskimo with beaded ears, cf.
Holmberg (1855-63), and a battle
helmet obtained by Baranov after the
1802 Tlingit rebellion (fig. 81;
Lisianskii 1814:plate I).

Numerous notes in his diary and his drawings
represent important additions to the collection.
His collecting methods were unusual for eth¬
nography at the time: Voznesenskii collected
objects systematically across functional cate¬
gories, so that the MAE acquired synoptic series
of clothing, canoes, masks, and other artifact
types.

Voznesenskii paid attention to every single
object, documenting each precisely as to its
name, the way it was used, and the materials
of which it was made. As a result his collection
is particularly valuable for research today.

Voznesenskii's collections, which are well rep¬
resented in the exhibition, include parts of MAE
accession 571, 593, 620, 2448, 2520, 2539,
2667, 2888, and 2938 — hunting tools and weap¬
ons, clothing, utensils, cult and ceremonial ob¬
jects, and other material, which not only illus¬
trate but also help reconstruct many elements
of the traditional cultures of the Eskimo, Aleut,
and Indians.

Under Voznesenskii's influence, L. A. Zago¬
skin, a lieutenant of the Russian fleet who
directed an expedition in Alaska in 1842—44,
became an enthusiastic collector. Zagoskin's book
(1967) made him the most important ethnog¬
rapher of his time. In Alaska he made a small
but valuable collection, only 43 artifacts alto¬
gether, composed of clothing, utensils, religious
objects, and others from the Eskimo and Indians
of the Yukon basin and the Kuskokwim. The
exhibition presents two tobacco boxes collected
by Zagoskin (MAE 537-4a, fig. 46, and 537-46,
fig. 94).

The Tlingit collection of the MAE is extremely
rich, allowing the study of many aspects of this
Indian culture. The artifacts related to shaman¬
ism are of special interest. Most of these were
obtained from the Igumen (Father Superior)

Georgi Chudnovskii, who was sent to Admiralty
Island as a missionary in 1891. He spent only
half a year there, but this was sufficient for him
to build a chapel, baptize almost 500 Indians,
establish friendly relationships with the local
shamans, and trade with them for numerous cult
objects. Of the 96 artifacts collected by Chud¬
novskii, 67 are of shamanistic nature. In the
exhibition a shaman's rattle (MAE 211-2, fig.
371) is displayed.

After the sale of Alaska in 1867, the flow of
Native American objects to the MAE somewhat
diminished. Except for Chudnovskii's, no more
important collections were added. Individual
collectors, who either had been to America
themselves or had acquired American objects in
another way, donated almost all of the new
acquisitions. For instance, the vice-president of
the Academy of Sciences, L. N. Maikov, be¬
queathed a collection of Aleut artifacts to the
museum in 1878, and Admiral K. N. Pos'et gave
two Eskimo statuettes and a pipe. At the begin¬
ning of the 20th century, in 1905, as a result of
a loan-exchange with a series of great museums
of the world, the MAE received a few collections
from the American Museum of Natural History
in New York, related to the cultures of several
Indian groups, including 53 Athapaskan and a
few Northwest Coast artifacts. This exchange
continued after the Russian Revolution; in 1930
the MAE obtained three significant collections
of Pueblo Indian material from the Smithsonian
in Washington. A series of collections and objects
found their way into the MAE inventory as
presents from private individuals.

The first exhibition on the cultures of America
opened in the MAE in 1889. In 1948 this exhi¬
bition was completely redone. The new exhibi¬
tion, periodically renewed and reorganized, lasts
until this day.

93. 1. G. Voznesenskii
Tlingit sketch by Voznesenskii.

MAE 1142-15; Aleut: MAE 571-60
Of all the contributors of Russian
America artifacts to the MAE, 1. G.
Voznesenskii is by far the most im¬
portant. Morgan Sherwood noted
"Voznesenskii must be reckoned the
most important single figure in the
history of science in Russian Amer¬
ica" (Pierce 1975:11). During ten
years in America he collected more
than 1 ,000 artifacts from Alaska,
British Columbia, and California, and
made ethnographic drawings, includ¬
ing this one showing a Tlingit group
in a canoe titled "Little and Big Apple
Islands."

Following instructions from the
Russian Academy of Sciences, Vozne¬
senskii gathered objects needed for
exhibition and research with detailed
documentation. Crossroads includes
many of these, such as this Aleut
pouch from St. George Island deco¬
rated with multicolor applique, sinew
thread embroidery, and cormorant
feather edging.

The Siberian collection of the MAE is one of
the largest in Russian museums. It consists of
more than 36,000 artifacts. The first Siberian
objects in the Kunstkamera were collected in
the first half of the 18th century by members
of the Second Kamchatka Expedition, G. F. Muller,
I. G. Gmelin. and S. P. Krasheninnikov. It was
then completed by the Academy Expedition of
1768—74 under Academician P. Pallas in Siberia,
the Ural region, the Arctic, the Caucasus, and
the Volga region. Research and collecting were
conducted by V. F. Zuev, S. G. Gmelin (Jr.),
N. Ia. Ozeretskovskii, and I. G. Georgi. Despite
the loss of their documentation, the few artifacts
that survive are of great historical and scientific
value. In the museum's catalog they are pres¬
ently listed as "from the old collection of Kunst¬
kamera.'' From Northeast Siberia we can men¬
tion Asian Eskimo arrow points and harpoons,
stone scrapers (MAE 4492, 4495), and a few
possibly Chukchi artifacts such as bone engraved
plates and miniature statuettes of walrus and
mammoth tusks (MAE 4469).

As a result of the ethnographic expeditions of
the 18th century, a series of fundamental works
was written, which provided the foundation for
ethnographic science in Russia. The travels around
the world and the research of the Russian
navigators of the early 19th century also left
their marks on the formation of the Siberian
collection, in addition to increasing the American
collection of the MAE. Thus for example the
MAE collections 666, 668, 752, and 867 were
made by Litke, Voznesenskii, and Zagoskin among
the Maritime Chukchi and Koryak. They consist
of more than 200 objects related to various
aspects of the traditional life of these peoples,
such as sledges with bone runners, quivers,
arrows, bolas, working tools, clothing, utensils,
and walrus ivory miniature carvings. Even though
these are modest compared with the American
collections, they constitute jewels of the MAE
Northeastern Siberian collection.

To this we can add a small collection of Evenk
clothing from the Okhotsk Sea coast, acquired
by the MAE in the first half of the 19th century
from K. I. Khlebnikov, the famous explorer of
North America and a Russian American Com¬
pany man (MAE 1, 60).

Nevertheless the bulk of the Northeastern
Siberian holdings of the MAE (Chukchi, Koryak,
Eskimo, Itelmen, Even) was collected in the late
19th and early 20th centuries. The most impor¬
tant contribution to the MAE collection was the
acquisition in 1898 from Nikolai L'vovich Gon-
datti, who, while scientific secretary of the An¬
thropological and Ethnographic Society of Mos¬
cow University, was in 1893 in charge of the
Anadyr district, which included at the time most

of the Chukchi Peninsula. Gondatti turned his
administrative task to good account by collecting
in every corner of the territory he had been
assigned to govern. He collected altogether 1,865
artifacts (MAE 395, 407. 408, 422, 434, 441,
442, 443, 444, 445, and 446) representing the
cultures of every Northeastern people. These
pieces are manufacturing, fishing, hunting, and
gathering tools, domestic objects and utensils,
clothing, toys, ceremonial objects, and walrus
and mammoth ivory carvings (cf. figs. 19, 32,
33, 227; Bogoraz 1901b). The content and the
character of these collections show that the
collector tried to cover each aspect under every
possible form, by presenting not only a unique
object but also series of the same object, which
form independent collections. Archeological
pieces, surface finds, and objects excavated by
Gondatti on the Yukaghir Mount on the Anadyr
River constitute an independent collection (MAE
872).

In 1898 W. G. Bogoras and W. I. Jochelson,
as participants in the Jesup Expedition organized
by Franz Boas of the American Museum of
Natural History, made an important contribution
to the MAE ethnographic collections of North¬
eastern Asian cultures. In order to study the
native cultures of the North Pacific coasts, the
link between Asian and American cultures. Boas
decided to entrust the study of the Asian part
of the project to Russian scientists. In 1898
V. V. Radlov, head of the Russian Imperial
Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, sug¬
gested Bogoras and Jochelson in answer to
Boas's request for assistance.

During 1900-01 Bogoras and Jochelson trav¬
eled through Kamchatka and Chukotka, collect¬
ing data on the language, material culture, social
structure, religion, and folklore of the Koryak,
Chukchi, Eskimo, and Itelmen as well as eth¬
nographic objects. Some of the artifacts collected
during this expedition were given to the MAE
(956. 1059), but the largest portion remained at
the American Museum. Clothing, ceremonial
objects, a complex of funeral objects, toys,
various hunting weapons, and craftwork made
a unique contribution to the holdings of these
museums.

In 1905 Bogoras wrote an invaluable descrip¬
tion of the inventory of artifacts brought to the
MAE from the Jesup Expedition, which still
preserves its scientific relevance. The material
collected during the expedition was also the
basis for later writings by these two scholars.
These works played an important role in the
development of Russian and Soviet ethnological
sciences. The monographs The Chukchee by
Bogoras and The Koryak by Jochelson, published
between 1904 and 1910 by the American Mu-

94. L. A. Zagoskin
Bering Sea Eskimo: MAE 537-4b
Voznesenskii convinced Lt. L. A. Za¬
goskin to collect for the MAE during
the latter's explorations in the inte¬
rior of Alaska (1842-44). Zagoskin's
book (1967) is the earliest description
of Eskimo and Indian peoples of the
Lower Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers.
His collections were small but impor¬
tant. This tobacco box is ornamented
with effigy figures, a feature that
links Bering Sea Eskimo, Pacific Es¬
kimo, and Northwest Coast Indian
art.

95. Rattle Panel
Tlingit: MAE 2448-30
This panel exhibits some of the finest
early Tlingit painting known. Its
function is uncertain, but it contains
pebbles and may have been a rattle.
One side has a highly stylized figure
of a bear with an elongated formline
body; the opposite illustrates a sea
lion. Early style markers include an¬
gular formlines, elongated eyelids,
and lobed teeth. Although attributed
to Voznesenskii, it may have been
presented by Grigorii Shelikhov in
about 1788.

seum, received attention and praise from both
Russian and foreign anthropologists.

Bogoras's and Jochelson's activity in Kam¬
chatka and Chukotka incited members of various
expeditions in Northeastern Siberia to collect
ethnographic objects. In 1901 the MAE received
a large collection of Maritime Chukchi material
collected along the coast between Provideniia
and Kliuchinskaia by A. G. Miagkov, from a gold¬
digging expedition (MAE 611, 169 artifacts).
Soon after, in 1910, the MAE added to its
inventory collections made by the Russian ge¬
ologist I. P. Tolmachev. He collected more than
300 artifacts (MAE 1791) during the first geo¬
logical survey of the coast of the Arctic Ocean
from the mouth of the Kolyma River to East
Cape, on the expedition of the Maritime De¬
partment of the Ministry of Trade and Industry.
Miagkov's and Tolmachev's collections, which
include clothing, bows, arrows, smoking pipes,
and craftwork, represent quite exhaustively the
culture of the maritime hunters of the Arctic
coast and complete perfectly Gondatti's, Bogo¬
ras's, and Jochelson's collections.

After the Russian Revolution in 1917, collect¬
ing of material on the peoples of the USSR
became the responsibility of a new generation
of ethnographers, educated in several Soviet
universities and agencies (Institute of Geog¬
raphy, Institute of the Peoples of the North,
Institute of Ethnography of the Academy of
Sciences of the USSR), where leading scholars
of the MAE, L. Ia. Sternberg, W. G. Bogoras,
E. G. Kagarov, D. K. Zelenin, and others, played
an active role.

The 1920s and 1930s mark a turn to intensive
collecting of material culture from every Siberian
group. S. N. Stebnitskii, a member of the Insti¬
tute of the Peoples of the North, made a partic¬
ularly interesting collection from the Koryak of
the eastern coast of Kamchatka, in 1929. It
consists of traditional ceremonial clothing, do¬
mestic objects, and children's toys made by
Koryak children in the 1920s (MAE 3896). The
scholarly description accompanying the collec¬
tion includes valuable ethnographic information
as well.

Simultaneously, his colleague A. S. Forstein
conducted some work in the Chukchi Peninsula.
Here she made an interesting Eskimo collection,
including a ceremonial kamleika, ordinary and
ceremonial clothing, pouches, and snowshoes
(MAE 4210).

The particularity of museum collections from
the Soviet period is that they include not only
artifacts from the traditional culture but also
objects reflecting the development and form of
the new cultures of the peoples of the USSR.
The most striking example of this is certainly

the large collection of engraved and carved ivory
walrus tusks from the famous Uelen workshop,
acquired by the MAE in 1951 (MAE 6010; fig.
327). The Uelen workshop was created in 1931
and serves as both an art school and a studio
for Chukchi, Koryak, and Eskimo artists, whose
ivory and bone carving has gained international
renown.

In the 1950s and 1960s, research and col¬
lecting among the peoples of Northeastern Si¬
beria were actively conducted by members of
the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, namely
I. S. Vdovin, I. S. Gurvich, S. A. Arutiunov, V. V.
Antropova, and Ch. M. Taksami (MAE 6601,
6355, 6747, 6450, and 6750). These collections
fill the gaps in the previous holdings of the MAE.
They consist of arrow points, scrapers, woven
and fur pouches, oil lamps, toys, ritual masks,
and religious objects.

The first Northeastern Asian archeological
collections of the MAE were made by Gondatti.
The next collections from ancient populations of
this area were from the eminent Soviet arche¬
ologist S. I. Rudenko, who was responsible for
excavation of the famous Pazyryk kurgan tombs
from the Scythian period in the Altai region.
Being interested in the peopling of the Arctic
and the contacts between ethnic groups in this
part of Asia, Rudenko conducted fieldwork along
the coast of Chukotka from Uelen to Sirenik in
1945, under the Leningrad Institute of History
of the Material Culture of the Academy of Sci¬
ences of the USSR (now Institute of Archeology)
and the (Soviet) Arctic Institute. This first ex¬
pedition discovered ancient sites near Uelen,
Naukan, Dezhnevo, Iandygai, and many other
places.

Rudenko's research was continued in the 1950s
and 1960s by members of the Institute of Eth¬
nography, M. G. Levin, D. A. Sergeev, and S. A.
Arutiunov. The materials excavated from two of
the largest sites known to this day, the Old
Bering Sea— Okvik— Punuk Uelen and Ekven burial
sites, as well as from the ancient settlement of
Ekven, constitute one of the most impressive
collections in the MAE inventory of ancient
cultures of Siberia (MAE 6479, 6493, 6508, 6561 ,
6588, and 6591). They represent more than
3,000 artifacts covering quite completely the
ancient Eskimo culture of the Asian side of the
Bering Sea almost 2,000 years ago. Ornate
harpoon heads and arrowheads, "winged ob¬
jects,” carvings with the circle-and-dot motif,
various domestic objects with engravings, mask-
oids and combs made of walrus tusk ivory, a
wooden mask, and wooden utensils are master¬
pieces of prehistoric art added to the treasure
of world culture (pp. 121—29).

Today the MAE is primarily known as the only

museum in the USSR that is devoted to the
cultures of the peoples of the world. Its exhibi¬
tions consist of 14 ethnographic halls and 1 hall
of physical anthropology. In 1933 the Institute
of Anthropology, Archeology, and Ethnography
was created in connection with the MAE. When
it was reorganized in 1937, a separate institute,
the N. N. Miklukho-Maklai Institute of Ethnog¬
raphy, was founded for the study, among its
main objectives, of ethnic history and the eth-
nogenesis of the peoples of the USSR and other
areas of the world, nationality processes (the
evolution of ethnic identity) in the USSR and
abroad, history of ancient cultures (including the
study of ancient manuscripts), problems of the
preservation of traditional cultures in the context
of urbanization, and urban ethnography. This
research is largely conducted on a multidisci¬
plinary basis that includes ethnolinguistics, eth-
nopsychology, ethnosociology, demography, and
medical ethnology. The intensive program of
fieldwork of the institute in all regions of the

96. "Sand Piper/Woodcock" Mask

Koniag Eskimo: MAE 571-8
A museum preparator by trade rather
than an ethnographer, Voznesenskii
published little of his Alaskan data,
including his notes on a "one act
mystery" he witnessed in which this
and other masks now in the MAE
collection were used. This specimen
was too fragile to be loaned for the
Crossroads exhibition.

97. Woman's Dance Coat
Koryak: MAE 3896-1
In addition to having many fine Rus¬
sian America objects, the collections
of the Museum of Anthropology and
Ethnology hold materials represent¬
ing cultures of many other areas of
the world. This Koryak dance coat
was collected in Kamchatka in 1928.
It features light, beaded fringes set
against dark-tanned reindeer skin
and has a chest bib that is common
in northeastern Siberian clothing (p.
18). Many of the beads on this coat
are of Chinese origin.

USSR and abroad adds to the museum's hold¬
ings, which at the present time number about a
million artifacts: 500,000 archeological objects,
150,000 physical anthropology specimens, and
more than 300,000 ethnographic pieces.

During the last 1 5 years the collections of the
MAE have been seen in exhibitions in the USA,
Japan, Sweden, Finland, Italy, Bulgaria, and
Germany; everywhere they have helped people
to realize their own participation in world civi¬
lization and to raise their respect for the cultures
of other peoples.

Baird's Naturalists: Smithsonian Collectors in Alaska

William W. Fitzhugh

98. Spencer F. Baird
SI neg. 46853

Baird, appointed assistant secretary
of the Smithsonian in 1850, arrived
with his scientific collection in two
railway boxcars. Convinced that
Alaska held the key to understanding
relationships of animals and peoples
across Bering Strait, Baird initiated
programs that resulted in the Smith¬
sonian becoming the 19th-century
center for North American arctic sci¬
ence.

The transfer of Alaska to the United States in
1867 marked a major turning point in scientific
studies of the North Pacific region. The advances
of Darwin, Lyell, Agassiz, von Humboldt, and
others had changed the ways scientists looked
at the world, and these views in turn were being
communicated to a public eager for information
about exotic peoples, places, and creatures. It
was an era in which observation, classification,
and interpretation of systematic relationships
was replacing classical Eurocentric dogma; an
era of science had dawned. It was also a time
of optimistic belief in the power of new tools to
produce new understandings about the natural

Early Smithsonian History

When the bequest of English scientist James
Smithson was translated by act of Congress in
1846 into creation of the Smithsonian Institution
as an "establishment for the increase and dif¬
fusion of knowledge among men” there was
little consensus about the direction to be taken
to pursue this broad mandate. However, with
the appointment of Spencer Fullerton Baird as
Smithsonian Institution Secretary Joseph Hen¬
ry's assistant in 1850 the Smithsonian's course
in the sciences began to take specific form.

Baird had a notion of the future he saw for
the young Smithsonian. At a time when the
frontier was expanding westward at a dramatic
rate, with Indian cultures and animal distribu¬
tions in a state of disruption and change, with
the threat of extinction mingling with the prom¬
ise of natural wonders, Baird saw the Smithson¬
ian's role as a dual one: documentating and
understanding this new, unfolding, natural world,
while at the same time reconstructing its history

world. In the United States, as the frontier
expanded west, new fields ripe for scientific
study were rapidly uncovered, not the least of
which was the natural history of northwestern
North America. As knowledge of the natural
world, including that of native cultures, ex¬
panded across the continent, it was inevitable
that Alaska should prove to be a rich source of
study. As it happened, the Smithsonian Insti¬
tution was uniquely positioned to be the primary
contributor to the nation's first scientific inves¬
tigations in Alaska, in the process compiling an
unparalleled collection of scientific data.

and preserving its past for future study and
edification. Baird saw the Smithsonian as a
center for natural history studies that could
support field collecting and analysis and could
disseminate new findings enriching man's
awareness of the natural world widely through
publication, lectures, and exhibitions. His most
pressing need was to find ways to get bright
young naturalists into the field so that they could
begin collecting, especially in frontier regions
where white man's influence had not drastically
changed the natural order.

Partly by design and partly by circumstances,
northwestern North America became the testing
ground for Baird's vision of a national program
of natural history. At mid-century, Russian
America south of the Yukon was administratively
and economically part of the Old World. These
ties were not lost on Baird, who was well
acquainted with ideas that the Old and New
Worlds must have had early land connections at

Bering Strait to account for the distributions of
living and fossil animals. Baird and Henry (who
especially promoted linguistic and archeological
studies of the Americas) were also aware of
controversies about the origin of the American
Indians (Haven 1856; also see Fagan 1987;
Wauchope 1962). Like Georg Wilhelm Steller
and S. P. Krasheninnikov a century earlier, Baird
saw possibilities of Asiatic connections across
Bering Strait and believed that their historical
relationships with New World peoples could be
determined by comparative philology and my¬
thology and by studies of skull form, much as
comparisons of closely related animals and plants
revealed their common history. Baird and Henry
saw the unique role of the Smithsonian as serving
the needs of government, the scientific estab¬
lishment, and the public. The fact that north¬
western North America in the 1850s and 60s
was essentially unknown to American science
gave Baird a powerful impetus for advancing his
Alaskan program.

In the early 1850s, as Henry and Baird began
to articulate this vision, it was lack of means,
not of ideas, that was the major obstacle. For a
small organization with few staff and facilities,
the problems seemed insurmountable. Baird
devised an ingenious solution, attaching the
Smithsonian to the forces of change themselves
to provide means for gathering collections and
data from remote regions. Enlisting the support
of government boundary survey parties and
commercial establishments, Baird created op¬
portunities for scientific collecting among the
government and commercial emissaries and
agents stationed in outposts in the western and
northern parts of North America. Hudson's Bay
factors, Indian agents, army and naval officers,
medical doctors, land surveyors, boundary com¬
missioners, and other officials were contacted
and were supplied with circulars providing in¬
structions on collecting procedures for speci¬
mens as varied as bird skins, eggs, plants, fossils.

Indian artifacts, and vocabularies. Informed am¬
ateur collectors were recruited wherever they
could be found — but especially from Chicago,
the hotbed of natural history training — spurred
to action by Baird's appeal for information and
specimens while they still were obtainable.

One of these associates, George Gibbs, had a
major impact on the development of ethno¬
graphic and linguistic profiles for the Washington
Territories. Gibbs's data were obtained in part
through use of circulars sent to agents and
government representatives, including the gov¬
ernor of Russian America. His goal was to use
language distributions and comparisons to re¬
construct the Indian history and tribal relation¬
ships, a formulation later followed by John
Wesley Powell in his linguistic studies. Gibbs's
view that Alaskan languages were related to
Asian languages, and the growing numbers of
scientists who saw American Indian peoples
originating from northeastern Asia via Bering
Strait, contributed to Baird's belief that ethno¬
logical studies in Alaska would provide answers
to the problem of relationships between New
World and Old World peoples.

Baird's Alaskan program did not materialize
overnight (Fitzhugh and Selig 1981). Rather it
took form slowly during the 1850s as an out¬
growth of the Smithsonian's correspondence
with amateur and professional collectors and its
requests for donations to the institution's grow¬
ing collections. During the mid- 1850s, while
George Gibbs was collecting Indian vocabularies
in the Northwest, Baird began to collaborate
with a brilliant young naturalist named Robert
Kennicott who had been collecting natural his¬
tory specimens from regions west of the Great
Lakes. Earlier Baird had established contact with
governors of the Hudson's Bay Company, par¬
ticularly with Sir George Simpson and his agents
managing the company's posts west of Hudson
Bay, requesting assistance acquiring collections
for the Smithsonian. The Hudson's Bay men
were willing but needed training in collection
and preservation techniques. What they really
needed was someone to provide guidance and
coordination. Baird found Kennicott eager for
the task and in 1859 sent him north on the
Smithsonian's first arctic field expedition.

Kennicott spent the years 1859-63 in the
Yukon Territory, arriving back in Washington
with his collections to a hero's welcome (Collins
1946; Nute 1943). These included 40 boxes
"embracing thousands of skins of birds and
mammals, eggs of nearly all the birds nesting
in the north, numerous skulls and skeletons of
animals, fishes in alcohol and preserved dry,
insects, fossils, plants, &c.'' Baird's report con¬
tinues:

99. Robert Kennicott
Photo: Grove National Historic Land¬
mark

Baird's first arctic enterprise began
by sending a gifted young naturalist
named Robert Kennicott to north¬
western Canada in 1859. Kennicott
later went on to lead the first U.S.
fieldwork program in Alaska, where
he died in 1866. The data collected
by Kennicott's team was influential in
convincing Congress and the public
that Alaska was valuable. Kennicott's
ethnological work was the first by
Americans in this region and was the
foundation for the Smithsonian's arc¬
tic program.

100. Sealing Stool

Anderson River Eskimo: NMNH 3978
Baird and Kennicott initiated a col¬
lecting program through Hudson's
Bay Company officials resident in the
Mackenzie District, Canada. This
stool used by Eskimos while waiting
for seals at their breathing holes was
obtained from Anderson River Eski¬
mos by Roderick McFarlane, a local
factor. Baird supplied post managers
with collecting instructions and
funds. Ethnological items were only
part of the plan; factors submitted
bird skins, eggs, animal pelts, native
vocabularies, and other materials. By
developing a network of amateur nat¬
ural historians, Baird built both the
Smithsonian's collection and its pub¬
lic and scientific constituency.

101. William Healy Dali: "Dean" of
Alaskan Natural History
SI neg. 1145; SA RU7073 (notebook)
Dali inherited the leadership of Alas¬
kan fieldwork following Kennicott's
death in 1866. His book Alaska and
Its Resources was the first English
language treatise on Alaska, and his
lifetime scientific contributions were
immense. His field notebooks — here
illustrating Malemiut Eskimo cloth¬
ing — are a rich source of primary
data.

Not in any way inferior in interest and importance to
the natural history collections were those relating to
the ethnological peculiarities of the Eskimaux and
different tribes of Indians inhabiting the Arctic re¬
gions. It is believed that no such series is elsewhere
to be found of the dresses, weapons, implements,
utensils, instruments of war and of the chase, 6-c.,
&c\, of the aborigines of Northern America. . . . The
materials will serve to fix with precision the relation¬
ships of the arctic animals to those of more southern
regions, their geographic distribution, their habits and
manners, and other particulars of interest, and to
extend very largely the admirable records presented
by Sir John Richardson relative to arctic zoology
(Smithsonian Institution Annual Report 1863:53).

Thus, with B. R. Ross (fig. 67), R. R, Mac-
Farlane (fig. 100), and other Hudson's Bay Com¬
pany men, Kennicott established the first com¬
prehensive ethnographic collection in North
America and, in the view of Henry B. Collins,
among the most treasured materials in the U.S.
National Museum. Not commented upon was
Baird's growing perception of Alaska as a vast
but potentially rich wilderness unknown to
American science whose secrets could be un¬
locked if only a means of entry could be found.

The Telegraph Survey and the Purchase of Alaska

While Kennicott was cataloging the arctic col¬
lections in Washington in 1865 the opportunity
Baird had been waiting for materialized. The
Western Union Telegraph Company, with whom
Baird had been consulting, had decided to build
an overland cable to Europe via Bering Strait to
compete with a trans-Atlantic cable plagued by
undersea breakage. Kennicott's new information
proved invaluable in selecting a route, and at
Baird's suggestion, Western Union appointed
Kennicott to lead a team to map the route and
gave him authority to make collections and
observations from this vast interior region, then
under tenuous Russian administration.

The operation of the telegraph survey, how¬
ever, proved more troublesome than either Baird

‘lit a. i-. . .J f->u

A,,u.

Avyv Lr v i-C- , r, , rlrLCc

(ml1 ivv .W"S I'CaHcLd , A. cLftyu

WV$v A-tc* i'v dV yb* ‘ , >tvv,

/f\U clniAA (6 a* S Wvrtc
l' t nr j i£v> KM, , Irrtf cJ it ...

bo-fr-ts . ’ jiMU IVrt 1 l A O'twviw

AiAsu , OK , . UavvHA C j ■ pv/Vv,, 0,‘. , ._»T vwn4.0

C-’.'JjL- , OK r, 0 j ukt

tfcc ^'(yvVvvW f i aTIAvLc//- GY t C < .

HAvvcLu 4 */£ :-jl V ‘ Vv'.'w - ;

kXL< .

\v Cuvdl

(wvv) iv.l— , tov/v^»-fV'vGiS.

VC tLAcki-y. /ht pfisi i'-u U) C-L'jilvwiTwst.
Wwit. iix. dll irivtt , tfvv. ! '~'U

im'. Li \sX~ itylc w J. ■■ • ■ t HTn

, 0%!, I vt-J-i V3 UwVwvv'

Ovv. t . .. d C-v C'v U-c , i P

vv-- <v* t/y

:U<1

■ rJJ

ov frV W

r\A<iS+ vrlJoLjl.

ss y . ‘Hx C C 1 'Ti-A l-t xv iUvD */rl

« . i 1- I ‘ ' I .

>V»J A -vuCb

VO VU'HV

>/ cvv^.

UV.T. l/KC £ tv V

C^J \aA*

vJl

U-v. . u Pkc

1 AJL ; ij v.'', fc<A4

iJr

fofcfc". Ovvnv.vv^ , Vw. A\&aM Ol/

1 i ‘ X fj r v‘ •'VV. 'd -/V/< . B if-'vtv dwt-

wvttC. .v WV* r, 0'v<d<a

Cc 'l sJ'i'sJju

Ji ’ •

iwVVw

; a. rv /wt l -

tiXfriyj) 1 OtT^vdlcAV i vvcix Irv-tfc.
i.vyvT nhuAff. ‘Vvvi w-w „

or Kennicott envisioned. It extended not only
from San Francisco to Bering Strait but had a
Siberian component as well, and surveys were
required in Kamchatka and Chukotka. In the end
the results were completely unexpected. It turned
out that Kennicott's skills as a field naturalist
were not matched by the organizational and
leadership abilities needed to manage an unruly
group of scientists, each with definite (and dif¬
ferent) ideas of their goals and needs. For Ken¬
nicott, the outcome was disastrous; he suffered
a nervous breakdown, and in May 1866 his body
was found on the bank of the Yukon River near
Nulato. Kennicott's death, apparently of a heart
attack, ended the career of a pioneering Amer¬
ican scientist and disrupted the ambitious plans
for the telegraph survey. But even as the Sci¬
entific Corps regrouped under the leadership of
William Healy Dali, completion of the Atlantic
cable by a rival company on 27 July, 1866,
sealed the fate of the project.

Though the telegraph project failed to com¬
plete all its goals, its contributions were inval¬
uable, being the first widespread scientific sur¬
vey of Alaska, including the Yukon River, Bering
Strait, Norton Sound, the Bering Sea coast, and
parts of Southeast Alaska. Data were also gath¬
ered from Kamchatka and the Siberian shore of
Bering Strait. Topographic and geological maps
were prepared; observations and collections were
made on native cultures, plants, animals, min¬
erals, and climate; and reports were compiled
on a wide assortment of other subjects. Although
few of these were formally published, the ar¬
chives of the Smithsonian contain a wealth of
primary documentation, much of which contrib¬
uted to Dali's monograph Alaska and Its Re¬
sources, the first English-language compendium
on Alaska, which was published in 1870.

When members of the Scientific Corps re¬
turned to Washington they found the govern-

/■(AwUv //. . ..

ment deeply involved in debate over the pur¬
chase of Alaska. Naturally, Baird was involved,
for the Smithsonian was the only government
agency with firsthand knowledge of Russian
America. Frederick Bischoff, who had spent a
year in the vicinity of Sitka studying insects, and
Henry Bannister, a paleontologist who knew the
Russian literature and who had explored the
regions around Norton Sound, south of Bering
Strait, testified to the Senate and the Department
of State on their observations, while Baird pro¬
vided information on zoology and minerals. All
reported evidence of great promise: a wealth of
fur-bearing animals, timber, minerals, fisheries,
and whaling, and highly developed native cul¬
tures. Quite to the astonishment of Congress
and much of the public, Alaska seemed worlds
apart from the better known but more impov¬
erished Eastern Arctic regions. This information
had a major impact on Senator Charles Sumner
of Massachusetts, whose speech "The Cessation
of Russian America,'' of April 9, 1867, to the
U.S. Senate presented the most informed view
in a debate that was overloaded with rumor and
ignorance.

Realizing that the battle for the purchase
would not be resolved only in the halls of
Congress and government agencies, Baird also
spread the word through the Smithsonian's "tel¬
egraph” network. Mobilizing the institution's
information-exchange links, he supplied data on
the results of the telegraph survey and copies
of Senator Sumner's speech to natural history
societies, universities, and Smithsonian corre¬
spondents. Partly in response to the Smithson¬
ian's finds, the Department of State concluded
the purchase treaty on March 30, 1867, and
after a long public debate, Congressional ap¬
proval was reached on July 27, 1868. Although
it remains unclear to what extent the Smithson¬
ian Congressional reports and public information
campaign influenced the outcome of the debate,
the institution is credited with having played a
significant role in this momentous transaction
(James 1942; Sherwood 1965).

One matter about which there can be little
doubt is that the telegraph survey set into motion
a Smithsonian program of Alaskan research of
unparalleled scope and impact. In addition to
the collections and information gathered, and its
impact on the purchase of Alaska, some of the
major results were crystallization of an Alaskan
research program, establishment of contacts
with other agencies, and training of scholars,
some of whom, like Dali, remained involved in
Smithsonian research in Alaska for the remain¬
der of the century, training another generation
of researchers. Ornithologist Henry Wood Elliott
became a leading conservationist in the fight to
save the Pribilof fur seals from extinction by fur
hunters.

During the next 30 years the Smithsonian
collected from virtually all regions of Alaska,
built an immense natural history research col¬
lection, and published volumes of basic data,
including many volumes on Alaskan ethnology,
archeology, and physical anthropology. The
fieldworkers involved were largely naturalists
with primary training in biological sciences,
rather than anthropologists or ethnologists, and
as natural scientists they tended to view native
peoples and cultures more objectively than many
19th-century scholars. Baird presided over this
stream of directed research like a mother hen,
coaxing and guiding his naturalists to extend
and improve their collections while cajoling the
agencies funding them into providing continued
support as they collected for the Smithsonian in
their spare time.

102. James G. Swan

SI neg. 79-6861; Haida: NMNH

89079, 88795

The Smithsonian's early Northwest
Coast collections were obtained pri¬
marily by James G. Swan, a corre¬
spondent of Baird's living in Port
Townsend, Washington (Cole 1985;
Doig 1980). Swan's major contribu¬
tion was in making a large collection
of Haida and Tlingit materials for the
1876 Centennial Exhibition. Swan
collected these raven rattles in the
early 1880s.

103. Crest Hat
Haida: NMNH 88961b
Among the collections the Smithson¬
ian wanted Swan to acquire were
spectacular display objects like this
large spruce-root hat. Made for noble
men, such hats were painted with
stylized animal representations and
were used as crest regalia by chiefs.
The formline design is of an orca, or
killer whale, a leading crest of the
Raven moiety of the Haida.

Smithsonian Anthropology in Alaska

104. Sketch of a Traditional Tlingit
House

SI-NAA 129776; SI neg. 45-604-A
Swan's notes include documentation
on objects he collected. His comment
on this watercolor sketch reads
"Form of House of the Indians of
Sitka, Alaska copied from a model
made by a Sitka Indian, drawn and
painted by James G. Swan, Port
Townsend, Washington Territory,
March 1874.'' Of a literary but un¬
scientific bent. Swan's documentation
did not match that of Baird's north¬
ern collectors, many of whom were
trained scientific observers.

Following the purchase of Alaska, Baird's
groundwork blossomed into a flurry of scientific
activity as the government expanded its activi¬
ties in the territory. Baird secured places for
naturalists on many government expeditions and
surveys and encouraged officers of Navy and
Revenue Service vessels, the forerunner of the
Coast Guard, to participate in collection and data
gathering. The Smithsonian's Annual Reports
attest to the success of this effort.

It was clear that scientific research required
better documentation than could be obtained
through casual collecting efforts. Following the
precedents established in the telegraph surveys,
Baird turned to his naturalists and, in collabo¬
ration with Dali, devised a regional program that
took advantage of the many government obser¬
vation posts that became established throughout
coastal Alaska from Sitka to St. Michael. Match¬

105. Shaman's Whale Tooth Amulet
Tlingit: NMNH 74990
Taking advantage of the posting of
government personnel to the Alaska
territories, Baird enlisted men like
John J. McLean to collect during the
course of other duties. While main¬
taining weather records for the Army
Signal Corps, McLean studied Tlingit
life and with funds provided by Baird
purchased objects. The images on
this shaman's amulet include octo¬
puses, bears, and birds; as is typical
of other shamanistic creations, their
meaning is unclear.

ing naturalists with observer posts at stations
established by the Hydrographic Office, the
Army Signal Corps, and elsewhere, Baird built
a network of collectors who worked under his
and other curators' guidance and who submitted
annual reports and collections at little cost to
the Smithsonian. Usually the primary interest of
these naturalists was biological, but by virtue of
their living among native peoples, they acquired
collections, vocabularies, and firsthand obser¬
vations on native life. Highlights of this research
program as it pertained to anthropological col¬
lections made for the Smithsonian in Alaska
between 1867 and 1900 are given below.

Northwest Coast: Swan, McLean, Niblack, and
Emmons

The Smithsonian's Northwest Coast research
began with the work of George T. Gibbs, who

as noted above is known primarily for his lin¬
guistic mapping but who also made contributions
to ethnographic collections on the Columbia
River Plateau and Puget Sound region. However,
it was James G. Swan, another pioneer resident
of the Northwest, who became the Smithsonian's
primary contributor of early Northwest ethno¬
graphic objects. His collections of Makah eth¬
nography (Swan 1 869) provided the Smithsonian
with a collection from this whaling society at
the southern end of the Northwest Coast, with
whom Swan lived for many years. Swan became
a lifelong correspondent of Baird's and is best
known for his collections for the 1876 Centennial
Exhibition from the least acculturated northern
tribes — Haida and Tlingit — and from central and
southern groups, which came at a critical time
in the history of these cultures. Carefully doc¬
umented, these collections included war canoes,
memorial poles, a painted house front, masks,
ceremonial objects, and many other items. Swan
continued collecting for the Smithsonian into the
1880s, but without travel funds, these later
collections were less documented (Cole 1985).
Swan's collections were partially published by
Ens. A. P. Niblack, a U.S. Naval officer who
served in Southeast Alaska with the U.S. Coast
and Geodetic Survey in 1885-87 and wrote the
first monograph on Tlingit culture (Niblack 1890).

Swan's work among the Tlingit was followed
by that of John J. McLean in the early 1880s.
McLean was posted to Sitka as a member of the
U.S. Signal Corps, following in the footsteps of
Bischoff, the telegraph survey entomologist. While
maintaining weather records for the Signal Corps,
McLean documented Tlingit life and culture and
made ethnographic collections, especially of sha-
manic materials. McLean was succeeded in 1884
by Lt. T. Dix Bolles of the U.S. Navy, who also
collected shamanic objects, notably a mask whose
eyes consist of ritual Chinese temple coins (fig.
442; Bolles 1883). He also compiled the first
listing of the Smithsonian's Eskimo collections
(Bolles 1889).

By far the most important of the U.S. Navy
collectors in Southeast Alaska was Lt. George
T. Emmons (Low 1977). Between 1882 and 1900
Emmons developed close relationships with the

Tlingit and assembled a large collection. Em¬
mons never sold much to the Smithsonian, which
already had Swan's impressive Tlingit collection,
but he became closely involved with the Amer¬
ican Museum of Natural History in the 1890s.
This relationship ended, however, after a falling
out with Franz Boas, after which Emmons as¬
sisted the Smithsonian on various projects. His
large collection ultimately went to the Field
Museum in Chicago. Emmons spent his life
working toward a Tlingit monograph that was
to have been published as a volume in Boas's
Jesup Expedition series, but he never completed
the manuscript, which is only now being pub¬
lished under the editorship of Frederica de
Laguna.

Kodiak and the Aleutians: Dali, Turner, Fisher,
and Stejneger

The people of Kodiak Island, like those of the
eastern Aleutians, came under strong Russian
influence in the late 1 700s, and by the beginning
of the American period much of their traditional
culture had disappeared. Nevertheless, William
J. Fisher obtained an important collection of
several hundred ethnographic specimens from
Kodiak while stationed there as a tidal observer
for the U.S. Coastal Survey, 1880—85. Fisher's
linguistic data, masks, costumes, hunting imple¬
ments, and other items are among the most
important collections from Kodiak in North
American collections. He also collected from
Bristol Bay, particularly Ugashik (Fisher 1883),
and from areas of the Pacific coast of Alaska.
After 1885, Smithsonian work on Kodiak ceased

until Ales Hrdlicka began archeological and
physical anthropological studies here in the 1930s.

In the Aleutian Islands, similar conditions of
Russian acculturation resulted in relatively little
traditional material culture surviving, except
basketry, after 1867, although important natural
history studies were conducted here by W. H.
Dali and Lucien Turner between 1868 and 1881 .
Although a paleontologist with special expertise
in snails and other mollusks, Dali made many
important contributions to Alaskan anthropology
during his long career. He was the first to point
out to Baird the rich potential for ethnographic
work among the Yupik Eskimo of the Bering Sea
coast. His book Alaska and Its Resources was
for decades the only regionwide compilation.
His field notes are full of ethnographic infor¬
mation, and he wrote an early report on the
Siberian Chukchi (Dali 1881). He made the first
archeological excavations in Alaska, excavated
the important whalers' cave at Unga in the
Shumagins (fig. 164; Dali 1876), established a
cultural chronology in the Aleutians based on
stratigraphic relationships (Dali 1873), and wrote
an excellent survey of labrets and masks (Dali
1884). Dali, second only to Baird, was respon¬
sible for the Smithsonian's continued involve¬
ment in Alaskan research in his capacity as the
Smithsonian's honorary curator of malacology.
Throughout his long career he was employed
not by the institution but by the Coast and
Geodetic Survey and later by the U.S. Geological
Survey.

One of Dali's discoveries was a young natu¬
ralist named Lucien Turner. Upon his return
from the telegraph survey, Dali recommended

106. E. W. Nelson: "The Man Who
Buys Good-For-Nothing Things"

Portrait, NPG; field photo; SI neg.
6393

Baird's most systematic collector,
Edward W. Nelson, began his associ¬
ation with the Smithsonian at age 2 1 .
Over a four-year period (1877-81)
Nelson assembled the most compre¬
hensive natural history collection
(some "caught by means of my hat")
ever obtained from an arctic region.
Nelson's success was due in part to
his adoption of Eskimo language,
clothing, and travel techniques. His
field photos, here of an Eskimo sum¬
mer camp, were the earliest such re¬
cord of Alaskan Eskimo life. Nelson's
custom of appearing in villages ask¬
ing for traditional implements earned
him the Yupik nickname "the man
who buys good-for-nothing things."

107. Man's Ground Squirrel Parka
Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 176104
Nelson was one of the few naturalists
working for Baird who wrote full re¬
ports on all aspects of his work. His
collections, documentation, and publi¬
cations on birds, animals, and West¬
ern Eskimo culture set scholarly
standards for northern science. Even
the few specimens he retained in his
private collection, including this
parka, eventually came to rest in the
National Museum of Natural History.

Turner to Baird for the position of U.S. Army
Signal Corps observer at St. Michael, formerly
the Russian American Company post at the
mouth of the Yukon River. Turner's ethnographic
collections from St. Michael were small but
spectacular. In 1877 he was transferred to the
Aleutians, with similarly excellent results until
1881, and later to northern Quebec (1881-83),
where he pioneered Indian and Eskimo ethno¬
graphic studies (Turner 1894) about the time
Boas first arrived in North America to begin his
career on Baffin Island, in 1883.

Leonhard Stejneger, a Smithsonian biologist
best known for his work on the northern fur seal
and for his biography of Georg Wilhelm S teller
(Stejneger 1936), naturalist on Bering's voyage
of 1741, followed Dali to the Aleutian Islands.
He also worked in Kamchatka and in the early

1880s conducted a large biological survey of the
Commander Islands. In 1882 Stejneger located
and excavated part of Bering's camp on Bering
Island where the ship St. Peter was beached
and where Bering (who perished) and his crew
spent the winter of 1 741—42. Among Stejneger' s
records is the following note:

I also visited the place of Bering's death, and the
wintering, and spent two days here, digging and
surveying. The ruin of the house was measured and
described, but my intention of taking a map-sketch
and some landscape-sketches of the surroundings was
completely frustrated by the never-ceasing rain. The
remains found were very scant, small glass beads
and sheets of mica, intended for money in the ex¬
change with the Indians, a few iron balls from grape-
shot, fragments of a brass plate with Russian armorial
ensigns, bolts, and sheaves from the vessel, etc. 1
have kept these relics, as perhaps the National Mu¬
seum is interested in receiving only the remains of
this unlucky expedition for discovering America from
the west (Stejneger manuscript n.d.).

Southwest Alaska: Dali. Turner, Nelson, and
Mac Kay

In 1877, Turner was replaced at St. Michael by
Edward W. Nelson, another Chicago naturalist
appointed to make weather observations for the
Army Signal Corps (Lantis 1954). Nelson re¬
mained at St. Michael until 1881, during which
time he amassed the most important collection
of Eskimo ethnographic materials ever collected
from the Arctic. Nelson's work was especially
significant in that the Eskimo from this region
were almost totally isolated from European con¬
tact and had retained much of their traditional
culture. Unlike many of the Smithsonian's nat¬
ural history collectors, Nelson published his
collections fully, and his monograph on western
Alaskan Eskimo ethnology has become a classic
(Nelson 1899, also 1882, 1887). Hundreds of
Nelson's Eskimo specimens were exchanged
with other museums around the world. Nelson
also made more than 100 ethnographic photo¬
graphs, which, except for those of Alphonse
Pinart's of 1871, are the earliest images of
Alaskan peoples.

In addition to the Fisher collections from
Ugashik (Fisher 1883), important collections were
gathered from Bristol Bay by Charles MacKay,
Signal Service observer at Nushagak in 1881 —
83. MacKay drowned in a boating accident while
in the field. His collections are important because
of the paucity of information on the ethnography
of this region, located strategically at the junction
of the Aleut, Bering Sea Eskimo, and Pacific
Eskimo culture areas. Other collections from
western Alaska include those obtained by John
Henry Turner along the Yukon in 1889—90 in
connection with boundary surveys for the Coast
and Geodetic Survey.

Bering Strait: Nelson, Hooper, and Healy

During the early years of the American period,
the region around Bering Strait, including Norton
Sound, Seward Peninsula, Kotzebue, and the
western side of Bering Strait — regions visited
heavily by whalers and other vessels — was fre¬
quented by Revenue Service vessels and others
on official missions. Many of the officers and
representatives of government agencies contrib¬
uted ethnographic collections resulting from these
trips. Such collections tended to be poorly doc¬
umented but were occasionally of great interest
because of their exceptional quality. Notable
among these collectors were Capt. C. L. Hooper
of the Revenue steamer Thomas Corwin in 1881
(Hooper 1881, 1884) and Capt. M. A. Healy,
who commanded the Corwin cruises of 1884—
85 (Healy 1887, 1889). Edward Nelson also made
collections from Bering Strait while on the Cor¬
win in 1881 in company with geologist John
Muir.

North Alaska: Ray, Murdoch, and Stoney

Ethnological research was a primary objective
of the U.S. International Polar Expedition to Point
Barrow in 1881—83. Under the command of Lt.
P. H. Ray (Ray 1885), this expedition made

important collections from the natives of the
Point Barrow region at a time when their culture
was under considerable influence from contact
with whalers but still retained its traditional
character. Much of the data collected was ob¬
tained by John Murdoch, who like many others
noted above received the post through Baird's
recommendation. The collections of this expe¬
dition represent the whaling culture of the North
Alaskan Eskimo and are especially strong in
material culture and technology, less so in social
culture, mythology, and other subjects. Mur¬
doch, like Nelson, published the expedition's
materials in full, and it, too, has become a classic
in arctic ethnography (Murdoch 1892). Murdoch
had a long association with the Smithsonian,
publishing many articles on Eskimo and other
ethnographic subjects, and was Smithsonian
librarian from 1887 to 1892. Of all the Smith¬
sonian's Alaskan collectors, Murdoch was the
only one who became primarily interested in
ethnology, but he never received a curatorial
appointment. Ray's and Murdoch's North Alas¬
kan research was extended by the work of Lt.
George M. Stoney (Stoney 1890), who explored
and mapped the North Alaskan interior between
1884 and 1886 and also made ethnological
collections from the Lower Yukon, Kotzebue,
and the North Alaskan interior.

108. Morris K. Jesup
AMNH neg. 2A-5200
A true American success story, Mor¬
ris K. Jesup (1830-1908) rose from
humble origins to become a million¬
aire in the railroad banking business.
He helped found the American Mu¬
seum of Natural History in 1869 and
later became its president and chief
financier from 1881 until his death in
1908.

Jesup, a man interested in big
problems, was impressed with the
scope of the expedition proposed by
his young curator, Franz Boas. Je-
sup's fervent support for the decade-
long Jesup North Pacific Expedition —
still the largest and most systematic
study of Asian-American relation¬
ships ever undertaken — earned him a
prominent place in the history of an¬
thropological science.

Thus, in slightly more than 40 years, between
1859 and 1900, the Smithsonian pioneered the
study of Alaskan natural history and anthropol¬
ogy, established one of the world's finest re¬
search collections, published large amounts of
data, guided the conduct of government science
in these new lands, and trained many scientists
who were to take up positions in other govern¬
ment agencies as these agencies began to assert
their own control over agency research needs.
One man in particular was responsible for this
remarkable achievement. Spencer Fullerton Baird
conceived of the need for Alaskan research at a
time when Russia's interest and control over
Russian America, which held so many secrets
to the understanding of natural history, cultures,
and peoples of the New World, was waning.
Assisted initially by industry and later by gov¬
ernment agencies, Baird, and later Dali, helped
recover important ethnological collections at a
time when Alaskan cultures were in a state of
transition. The importance of these collections,
their documentation, and the publications by the
scientists who collected them is inestimable.

Yet by themselves, these collections provide
only a partial view of Alaskan cultures during
the last half of the late 19th century. With

Russian collections representing the age of ex¬
ploration and contact and the Smithsonian doc¬
umenting the Alaskan cultures in Southwest
Alaska and north of the Aleutians in a relatively
unacculturated state. Boas turned to the one
remaining geographic area for which no Western
sources of anthropological materials were avail¬
able — Northeastern Siberia. In addition to seek¬
ing data. Boas also reviewed the questions of
Northeast Asia-America connections raised by
Gallatin, Morton, Agassiz, Bachman, and others
in the early to mid 19th century, and that had
energized Henry, Gibbs, and Baird at the Smith¬
sonian in the 1850s, but for which firm answers
were still not available. In part this was because
the Smithsonian's Alaskan work had been done
primarily by biologists and naturalists and not
by experts trained in the study of anthropology.
Boas was formulating a new scientific discipline
and believed a more problem-oriented and rig¬
orous methodology, carried out by specially
trained ethnologists, would provide the answers
to cultural relationships across Bering Strait.
Boas did not foresee that the problems would
prove even more durable than he imagined,
their solutions seemingly even more remote.

109. Franz Boas
AMNH neg. 2A-5161
When Franz Boas (1858-1942) ar¬
rived at the American Museum of
Natural History in 1896 he lost no
time presenting an idea for a grandi¬
ose project on the cultures and his¬
tory of the North Pacific region. Boas
saw the lack of data from Siberian
tribes as the major impediment to
solving this problem. Between 1897
and 1903 Boas secured funding and
fielded research teams, and in subse¬
quent years edited and supervised
publications. Initially optimistic about
the results, Boas later grew distrust¬
ful of his interpretations and never
wrote the final report he promised
Jesup. Today, the Jesup Expedition's
major contributions are in its huge
collection of specimens and field data
and the detailed publications on a re¬
mote and previously unknown region.

The American Museum's Jesup North Pacific Expedition

Stanley A. Freed, Ruth S. Freed, and Laila Williamson

"The biggest of the unsolved anthropological
and ethnical problems” and one that is "alive
with human and historic interest” was how the
New York Times, in a March 1897 editorial,
greeted the announcement that the American
Museum of Natural History was about to launch
an ambitious investigation of the relationship
between the peoples of northeastern Asia and
northwestern North America. Named after Mor¬
ris K. Jesup (1830—1908), then president of the
American Museum, the venture involved six
years of fieldwork among the principal tribes on
both sides of the Bering Strait (fig. 3). Describing
the project as "dealing with a subject of great
interest . . . the theory that America was origi¬
nally peopled by migratory tribes from the
Asiatic continent,” Jesup invited contributions
from friends of the American Museum. Appar¬
ently finding no takers, Jesup later declared that
he would assume the entire expense of the
project.

Franz Boas (1858—1942), then assistant cu¬
rator in the museum's Department of Anthro¬
pology and later to become the most distin¬
guished American anthropologist of his time,
directed the project. Boas conceived the research
to answer three main questions: the origin of
the early inhabitants of America, "the relation¬
ship between the American race and the Asiatic
race, and the relationship between American
culture and Asiatic culture” (Boas 1905:92).
Although Jesup and the popular press were
interested principally in the question of the origin
of the Amerindians, Boas seemed little con¬
cerned with it, in all likelihood believing that
their place of origin was obvious.

Boas moved quickly to set the project in
motion. In late May 1897, less than three months
after the announcement of the expedition, Boas
left New York in the company of Harlan I. Smith
of the American Museum and Livingston Farrand
of Columbia University for a summer of field¬
work. The three men arrived in Spences Bridge,
British Columbia, where they joined James Teit,
a Scotsman who had married a Thompson Indian
and spoke several Salish dialects fluently. Boas

had first met Teit in 1894. "James Teit is a
treasure,” he wrote to his wife. "He knows a
great deal about the tribes. I engaged him right
away” (Rohner 1969:139).

Boas, Farrand, and Teit headed north on
horseback to investigate the physical character¬
istics of the Lillooet and Shuswap and the cus¬
toms and physical traits of the Chilcotin. The
party proceeded slowly to the Chilcotin, where
Farrand remained for a month while Boas, Teit,
and an Indian guide made a difficult journey
westward across a wild 3,500-foot plateau north
of Tatla Lake and over the Coast Mountains. On
July 20, almost seven weeks after leaving Spences
Bridge, Boas arrived at the village of Bella Coola,
where he met George Hunt, his principal as¬
sistant and collaborator. He remained in Bella
Coola a bit more than a fortnight working with
Hunt on Kwakiutl texts and with Bella Coola
informants. On August 5, he left Bella Coola for
Numa to catch a steamer for Port Essington on
the Skeena River, where he intended to study
the Haida and Tsimshian in the company of
Harlan I. Smith.

While Boas was awaiting the ship at Numa,
another steamer arrived from the north with
George Dorsey of Chicago's Columbian Museum
(now the Field Museum of Natural History) and
some companions aboard. They were on a col¬
lecting tour. They disembarked, met Boas, and
the group had a brief, very friendly conversation.
The next day, Boas wrote to his wife:

This trip of Dorsey's annoys me very much. . . . What
makes me so furious is the fact that these Chicago
people simply adopt my plans and then try to beat
me to it. ... I don't really think that his trip will
interfere with my work, but this treacherous way of
acting makes me awfully angry (Rohner 1969:221).

Boas regarded the Northwest Coast as his ter¬
ritory and believed that infringement, without
at least the courtesy of consultation, was intol¬
erable. Frederick Ward Putnam sympathized
with Boas but from the beginning had pointed
out that competition was probably inevitable.

Boas' s anger after the chance meeting at Numa
was more than a transitory reaction; it reflected

the intense competition, enhanced by personal
bitterness, between New York's American Mu¬
seum and Chicago's Field Museum, which was
an undercurrent throughout the years of the
Jesup Expedition. Boas had expected to be
named as head of anthropology at the new
Chicago museum but was passed over. Boas felt
that his rejection by the Field Museum was an
insult, and Putnam shared his anger. With the
financial support of Jesup. Boas and Putnam
were in a strong position, and Putnam vowed to
best Chicago. Dorsey in Chicago also had strong
backing and was as combative as the New
Yorkers.

The battle for artifacts was one aspect of the
competition, but even more serious from Boas's
point of view were Dorsey's efforts to entice
George Hunt away from him. At the Numa
meeting, the Chicago group asked about Hunt's
whereabouts, but Boas wrote, "I was mean
enough not to tell them . . . and I have written
George Hunt that he should not do anything for
them. 1 have to do this to protect myself”
(Rohner 1969:222).

Hunt was the keystone of Boas's personal
Northwest Coast research. Hunt's mother was
a Tlingit and his father, an English Hudson's Bay
Company factor. Raised in Port Rupert as a
Kwakiutl, Hunt spoke their language fluently,
was literate in English, and was a steady and
reliable worker. Boas trained him to transcribe
Kwakiutl texts, and much of Boas's Kwakiutl
research depended on him (Cannizzo 1983:45,
47—48, 53). Moreover, Hunt was Boas's principal
collector, managing to make some remarkable

purchases, such as the Nootka Whalers' Washing
House in 1904.

After the summer of 1897, Boas made only
one other trip to the Northwest Coast in the
course of the Jesup Expedition. In 1900, he
visited Spences Bridge for about a week's work
in the Nicola Valley. From July 3 to September
9, he was in Alert Bay with George Hunt working
with the Kwakiutl. He wrote to his secretary,
"The work is interesting, but very unexciting. 1
am sitting outdoors all day with my interpreters
and pump the people.”1

Boas and his field investigators collected about
half of the American Museum's 16,750 North¬
west Coast artifacts. From the first, systematic
collecting was an important part of Boas's own
work on the Northwest Coast and of all the
research carried out by the Jesup Expedition.
Boas was generally circumspect as a collector
of artifacts, carefully establishing a reputation
for patience, generosity, and tact. "His heart is
pure and kind toward us Indians,” said a Kwakiutl
chief during a potlatch that Boas gave to pay for
the performance of a dance. "My heart is friendly
toward him and if he wants anything from us
we shall do our best to do what he asks” (Rohner
1969:37).

Most of the formidable body of ethnographic
data that Boas and his colleagues collected was
published in the Memoirs of the American Mu¬
seum of Natural History, Jesup North Pacific
Expedition. Harlan I. Smith, who served at the
American Museum until 1911 and eventually
became chief archeologist of the National Mu¬
seum of Canada, established his reputation with

110. Haida Village, Queen Charlotte
Islands

AMNH neg. 330387
The Jesup Expedition began work on
the southern Northwest Coast in
1897. Boas had already initiated re¬
search here with a team interested in
combining ethnology, archeology,
physical anthropology, and linguistics
to solve problems of cultural relation¬
ships and development. The British
Columbia work served as a testing
ground for methods Boas was to ap¬
ply in his study of Asian-American
problems.

This photograph of Skidegate, a
Haida village in the Queen Char¬
lottes, was taken in 1900 by John R.
Swanton, a Smithsonian anthropolo¬
gist who collaborated with Boas.

111. Shaman's Apron
Yukaghir: AMNH 70-5620b
This apron was purchased from a
Yukaghir shaman whose name was
Igor Shamanov. Though part of an
entire costume (fig. 326) made for a
male shaman, its fur tassels are char¬
acteristic of female garments. Sexual
ambiguity and transvestism were
common features of Siberian sha¬
mans. Male shamans often adopted
female names, behaved like women,
and wore women's clothing.

112. Bogoras on the Kolyma River
AMNH neg. 22402, Jesup Exp.
Waldemar Bogoras (1865-1936), a
populist revolutionary whose ethno¬
logical interests developed during ex¬
ile in Siberia, was hired by Boas to
work among the Chukchi. During 18
months (1900-1901) Bogoras trav¬
eled extensively in Chukotka while
his wife made collections in the vicin¬
ity of the Anadyr. Working conditions
were terrible; famine and disease
were rampant, and Bogoras nearly
died of influenza.

Despite harsh conditions, the Bogo-
rases amassed a huge collection:
5,000 artifacts, 450 tales and texts,

75 skulls and archeological samples,
33 plaster face casts, somatological
measurements of 860 individuals,
and 95 wax cylinder recordings.

These collections surpassed Boas's
expectations aind were eventually
published in seven monographs and
numerous scholarly papers.

a series of excavations in British Columbia and
Washington. John R. Swanton, who was to
produce a prodigious number of publications on
the North American Indians, participated in the
Jesup Expedition early in his career while a
member of the Bureau of American Ethnology,
with the bureau and the American Museum
dividing both the financing and the information
that he collected on the Haida. Livingston Far-
rand of Columbia University, who went with
Boas and Smith in the opening thrust of the
expedition into the Northwest in 1897, wrote on
the traditions of the Chilcotin and Quinault and
on the basketry designs of several Salish groups.
Boas's local collaborators, Hunt and James Teit,
made substantial contributions. Hunt mainly
assisted Boas; his name appears with Boas's on
the title pages of Kwakiutl monographs. Teit
wrote on the Thompson, Lillooet, and Shuswap.
In addition to producing his famous monographs
on the Kwakiutl, Boas wrote on the Bella Coola
and edited the Jesup series.

The Siberian operations of the expedition,
beginning a year later than the American re¬
search, covered an area many times as large
under much more difficult conditions. Three
teams carried out the fieldwork: one in southern
and two in northern Siberia. The southern team,
composed of ethnologist Berthold Laufer and
archeologist Gerard Fowke, was first into the
field, operating along the Amur River and on
Sakhalin Island in 1898. Laufer continued his
fieldwork in 1899. The two northern teams were

headed by Waldemar Bogoras and Waldemar
Jochelson.

Born in Germany, Berthold Laufer (1874—
1934) took his doctorate from the University of
Leipzig in 1897 with a dissertation on a Tibetan
text. He decided to make East Asia his specialty
and, as part of his preparation, studied no fewer
than ten Asian languages. On May 19, 1897,
Boas wrote to Laufer that he would receive $500
per year while in the field and his expenses.

Laufer arrived on Sakhalin Island on July 10,
1898, where he remained until March 21, 1899,
studying the Nivkhi, Evenk, and Ainu. He began
with the Nivkhi and Evenk in northeastern Sa¬
khalin and then headed south to investigate the
Evenk and Ainu of central and southern Sakhalin,
a departure delayed for 2| months by influenza
and pneumonia contracted among the Nivkhi.
The journey by horseback, reindeer sled, and
dogsled was difficult and dangerous. Once he
broke through the ice and would have drowned
had not his guide seen the incident the moment
it happened and saved him.

Laufer crossed to the mainland on March 25
and settled in Khabarovsk on the Amur River to
study the Nanai (Golde). He estimated his ex¬
penses for work on the Amur at 3,000 rubles
(about $1 ,560), explaining, "Nothing is free here
except death, which you can have in this country
at special bargain rates” (American Museum of
Natural History, New York City, Laufer to Boas,
March 4, 1899, translated and quoted in Boas
to Jesup, May 4, 1899). By the end of May,

navigation had opened on the Amur, and Laufer
descended the river, visiting Nanai and Nivkhi
villages on the way. About his work on the
Lower Amur, Laufer wrote,

The trip during summer on the lower Amoor was
really more trying than the winter campaign on the
island of Saghalin. Nobody who has not been there
can have an idea of the dreadful horrors one has to
undergo on account of the insect-pest, combined with
heat and sixteen months' loanly [sic] life in wilderness,
which resulted into an extraordinary state of ner¬
vousness I never experienced before (Laufer to Boas,
November 2, 1899).

Laufer's only publication in the Jesup North
Pacific Expedition series is a monograph on the
art of the Amur tribes (Laufer 1902). He was
especially fascinated by the art of the Nanai and
their neighbors and collected many objects that
were superb artworks (Kendall 1986:5). After
the Jesup Expedition, Laufer lived in the United
States for the rest of his life. He was affiliated
with the American Museum and Columbia Uni¬
versity until he joined the Field Museum of
Natural History in 1908, where he spent the rest
of his scholarly career.

Boas's plans for fieldwork in northern Siberia
were developed with the aid of V. V. Radlov,
director of the Museum of Anthropology and
Ethnography of the Imperial Academy of Sci¬
ences, who recommended Waldemar Bogoras
(1865—1936) and Waldemar Jochelson ( 1 855 —
1 937) as best qualified (Radlov to Boas, February
23, 1898). Friends and colleagues, they were
Russian intellectuals and revolutionaries who in
their youth were exiled to Siberia where they
became ethnographers.

In the spring of 1900, Jesup wrote a long
letter officially giving Jochelson charge of the
work of the expedition in northeastern Asia
(Jesup to Jochelson, March 24, 1900). Jochelson
and Bogoras would each receive $ 1 00 per month.
However, Mrs. Jochelson and Mrs. Bogoras,
whose "scientific work . . . must be considered
as part of the results of the expedition," would
receive no separate remuneration.

Arriving at Mariinsky Post at the mouth of the
Anadyr River on July 18, 1900, the Bogorases
spent their first four months of fieldwork with
the Reindeer Chukchi who camped along the
seashore during the summer. He laconically
described conditions that summer as rather
"unfavorable" because of a measles epidemic
that in places caused the death of 30 percent of
the population (Boas 1903:110).

At the end of October, Bogoras began a
journey with a Cossack and a native guide
through a territory ranging from Indian Point
and St. Lawrence Island on the northeast to
Kamchatka on the southwest. Traveling mostly

FQSTALTELEGRAPH

'~J V-

COMMERCIAL CABLES
CABLEGRAM

il C<*« lrnwft ltd n,t Miup n

7 u

.. A c £ c cojr‘

. 6('/h

Ar<

/Jc

Jr i/Uj « ( //<-

C l / f C a. f 6 t H

0 •'-'t

« «.£ >< <_ K >1 tin <21

'* Ifcl* «***«' r« hr U wttbwl Ik, .Mhi. payer. Keprtitloa* ofdoaUtlal word, abanld

r obtalncl through the Company- a oOfa*. And not by DIKF.CT application to the render.

by dogsled, Bogoras was on the move for the
rest of his 12^ months in northeastern Asia. He
generally remained no more than four weeks in
any locality. At times, the journey was an ordeal.
Bogoras had influenza on the way back to his
base at Mariinsky Post, and his illness became
so alarming that his Cossack asked where to
deliver his body and official papers in case he
died en route. While her husband traveled, Mrs.
Bogoras stayed on the Anadyr. She spent her
time traveling between Mariinsky Post and Mar-
kovo, gathering the greater part of the collections
for the American Museum (Boas 1903:110-14;
Bogoras to Boas, September 11, 1901).

Back in St. Petersburg in the fall of 1904,
Bogoras was settling in for a winter of writing,
but political developments were soon to usurp
almost all his attention. In 1905 events in Russia
were close to a revolution. To Boas, who was
trying to extract completed manuscripts from
Bogoras and Jochelson, any social disturbance
was a threat to the timely completion of the
work. He kept gentle pressure on Bogoras in a
carefully worded letter, in which he complained
of having heard nothing from him for a long
time. Bogoras replied from St. Petersburg:

I am afraid that you are right and I feel myself guilty
of much neglect to all dear friends in America. But
you will understand that an epoch like this happens
only once in many centuries for every state and nation
and we feel ourselves torn away with the current
even against our will (Bogoras to Boas, April 6, 1905).

Boas was upset and immediately wrote to
Bogoras, rejecting the idea that exciting social
events were a valid excuse for neglecting sci¬
ence. Science was Boas's first priority. However,
Bogoras's heart clearly was in politics. He wrote,
"You must believe us, that we here do not forget
our good friends in America nor indeed any¬
where. But the events of the time are so stirring.

113. Bogoras, the Revolutionary
AMNH, Anthropology Archives
Boas received this ominous telegram
from Bogoras in November 1905
after Bogoras had returned from the
field and was writing up his expedi¬
tion field notes. Distraught at the in¬
carceration of his collaborator. Boas
cabled V. Radlov, director of the Mu¬
seum of Anthropology and Ethnology:
"Bogoras arrested Wednesday Mos¬
cow. If wrongly can release be se¬
cured for continuing scientific work
for Museum."

Bogoras's arrest in Moscow at a
Farmers Congress was political; he
was a Russian intellectual with mem¬
bership in revolutionary organizations
sharing ideological commitment to
peasants and "folk" people. After re¬
turning to St. Petersburg from the Je¬
sup Expedition he became swept up
in the political ferment of the early
stages of the Russian Revolution.
Boas, anxious for publication of Bogo¬
ras's scientific work, contributed to
the successful efforts for his release.
In later years, Bogoras went on to
publish widely as both ethnographer
and novelist, and to head the Insti¬
tute of the Peoples of the North that
established the first Soviet policies
for its northern subjects.

100

The blood is flowing, the best blood of the
country, and no result is to be seen so far”
(Bogoras to Boas, May 13, 1905). In late Novem¬
ber, Bogoras wrote to Boas that his only present
interest was the Russian situation.

mental work among the northern tribes of Siberia
(Krader 1968:117; Boas 1937:314).

Bogoras' s work for the Jesup Expedition re¬
sulted in seven monographs, most prominently
on the Chukchi. He and his wife collected eth-

114. Sled Travel in Siberia
AMNH neg. 4155, Jesup Exp.

Koryak: AMNH 70-3040
Jochelson and his wife, Dina Brodsky,
shared the danger and exhaustion of
Siberian travel: "Bogs, mountain tor¬
rents, rocky passes and thick forests
combined to hinder our progress. . .

A heavy rain . . . caused the provi¬
sions to rot." Here Jochelson and
Brodsky pause during a spring sled
trip with Reindeer Koryaks. Jochelson
collected this Koryak doll portraying
a Russian traveler in European coat,
boots, hat, and buttoned vest. Is it
Jochelson?

On November 27, Bogoras was arrested in
Moscow. Two days later, he dispatched a cable¬
gram to Boas, "Am arrested, reasons unknown”.
However, Bogoras was to spend only two weeks
in prison before the Literary Artists' Society of
Moscow obtained his release by posting bail of
15,000 rubles (Bogoras to Boas, January 10,
1906). After the uprising, Bogoras went to St.
Petersburg and from there to Wiborg, Finland.
Eventually he returned to Russia and lived the
rest of his life engaging in scientific and literary
work. After the revolution, he became director
of the Institute of the Peoples of the North, an
agency concerned with education and develop-

nographic data, linguistic notes, 450 tales and
texts, 5,000 ethnographic artifacts, skeletal ma¬
terial, 33 plaster casts of faces, 75 skulls and
archeological specimens, 95 phonographic rec¬
ords, and somatological measurements of 860
individuals (Boas 1903:115). No modern anthro¬
pologist would ever collect such a diversity of
data.

Like Bogoras, Jochelson engaged in revolu¬
tionary activities as a student. He had to flee
Russia in 1875 to avoid arrest. In 1884, trying
to enter Russia under an assumed name to
continue his revolutionary work, he was recog¬
nized at the border and arrested. He served

115. Jochelson Camp in Stanovoi
Mountains

AMNH neg. 4199, Jesup Exp.
Waldemar Jochelson (1855-1937)
was a colleague of Bogoras's also rec¬
ommended by Radlov. Jochelson, also
a revolutionary whose interest in Si¬
berian ethnography developed during
exile, was older and more experi¬
enced than Bogoras, and was put in
overall charge of the expedition's
Siberian work. Working south of Bo¬
goras, Jochelson studied the Koryak,
Yukaghir, and Yakut, while Borogas
studied the Even, Chukchi, and Asian
Eskimo. Jochelson later served as a
director of the Museum of Anthropol¬
ogy and Ethnography.

101

three years in solitary confinement and was then
exiled for ten years to Northeastern Siberia. He
spent his time in ethnological and linguistic
studies of the native tribes, writing articles for
various Russian scientific societies.

The Jochelsons were assigned to study the
Koryak, Yukaghir, and Yakut for the Jesup Ex¬
pedition. They arrived in Kushka, a small village
at the mouth of the Gizhiga River, on August
16, 1900. During the measles epidemic of the
winter of 1899—1900, 179 persons out of a total
of 500 had died at Gizhiga, and, contrary to
Jochelson's expectations, no Koryak were to be
found. The Reindeer Koryak, who usually win¬
tered there, had moved far into the mountains
to escape the epidemic. The Jochelsons then
went overland to the villages of the Maritime
Koryak on Penzhina Bay, living most of the time
in native underground dwellings. Jochelson re¬
ported to Boas:

It is almost impossible to describe the squalor of these
dwellings. The smoke, which hits the hut, makes the
eyes smart. It is particularly dense in the upper part
of the hut, so that work that has to be done in an
upright position becomes almost impossible. Walls,
ladder and household utensils are covered with a
greasy soot, so that contact with them leaves shining
black spots on hands and clothing. The dim light
which falls through the smoke-hole is hardly sufficient
for writing and reading. The odor of blubber and of
refuse is almost intolerable; and the inmates, intoxi¬
cated with fly agaric ( Amanita muscaria), add to the
discomfort of the situation. The natives are infested
with lice. As long as we remained in these dwellings
we could not escape these insects, which we dreaded
more than any of the privations of our journey (Boas
1903:104).

The Jochelsons had to make dangerous jour¬
neys. Their late-summer trip (August 15 to
October 9, 1901) from Kushka to Verkhne-
Kolymsk to study the Reindeer Koryak gives an
idea of travel in Siberia. Jochelson reported:

This journey was the most difficult one that it was
ever my fate to undertake. Bogs, mountain torrents,
rocky passes and thick forests combined to hinder
our progress. ... A heavy rain . . . caused the provi¬
sions to rot. Therefore we had to cut down our rations
from the very beginning. After crossing the [moun¬
tain] passes . . . we reached the upper courses of the
Korkodon River, by this time our horses were ex¬
hausted, and it was necessary to take a long rest
(Boas 1903:107).

The temperature was dropping daily, and the
Jochelson party knew that they would have to
hurry if they were to reach Verkhne-Kolymsk
before the river froze. They spent a day building
a raft and prepared to float down the Korkodon
River to a Yukaghir camp where they could
obtain a boat. The descent was made dangerous
by numerous rapids, rocky banks, and jams of
driftwood. Their guides said that the descent
could be made in two days, so they left most of
their food with three Yakuts who stayed with
the horses and reduced their own allowance to
a three-day supply. The journey took nine days;
for the last six days, each person received only
two cups of flour daily and a little tea without
sugar (Boas 1903:107). They spent four days
among the Yukaghir of the Korkodon and then
set out in a boat for Verkhne-Kolymsk. The river
froze when they were 40 miles from Verkhne-
Kolymsk, and they had to walk for two days to
reach the settlement.

116. Dina Brodsky in Native Hut
AMNH neg. 337626, Jesup Exp.
Russian: Uncataloged teapot, com¬
pass, Dohmer collection, AMNH
The Jochelsons arived in Gizhiga in
August 1900, only to find 179 of 500
Koryaks had died of measles there
the previous winter; the remainder
had fled into the mountains to escape
the epidemic. The Jochelsons at¬
tempted to follow, frequently living
in underground houses whose squalid
conditions, smoke, lack of room, and
odor of blubber, they found oppres¬
sive. Travel direction was assisted by
Jochelson's compass, and camp life
was brightened by a brass teapot and
glassware. In this photo, Brodsky
emerges from a hut with her note
pad and drinking glass.

102

117. Expedition Freight at Marins kii
Post

AMNH neg. 1380, Jesup Exp.
Marinskii Post, at the mouth of the
Anadyr River, was Bogoras's head¬
quarters and the central location of
the Chukchi collecting effort. While
Bogoras traveled, his wife collected
here and at Markovo Post on the mid¬
dle Anadyr. In August 1901 the ex¬
pedition crew and freight (shown
here) departed on the annual postal
steamer to Vladivostok.

118. Rafting Down the Korkodon
AMNH neg. 4194, Jesup Exp.

Danger was the constant companion
of fieldwork in Siberia. Jochelson de¬
scribed the trip from Kushka to
Verkhne-Kolymsk as "the most diffi¬
cult one that it was ever my fate to
undertake." Lack of food, freezing
conditions, and exhausted horses
forced the party to build a raft on
which they trusted their luck through
rapids and logjams. Even so, freeze-
up overtook them, and they had to
complete the final 40 miles on foot.
Here Jochelson, Brodsky, pet dog,
and field party pose in an eddy for a
"crew shot" at the beginning of the
trip.

The Jochelsons made comprehensive studies
of the Koryak and Yukaghir, collected 3,000
ethnographic artifacts, 41 casts of faces, meas¬
urements of 900 individuals, 1 ,200 photographs,
150 tales and texts, phonographic cylinders,
skulls and archeological specimens, and a small
zoological collection (Boas 1903:109). Jochelson
published several monographs on the Koryak,
Yukaghir, and Yakut under the auspices of the
American Museum. The museum also issued his
useful handbook, Peoples of Asiatic Russia (1928).
Dina Brodsky Jochelson, later to take a degree
in medicine, handled all the anthropometric and
medical work and most of the photography. She
used some of her anthropological measurements
for her doctoral dissertation at the University of
Zurich, published in Archiv fur Anthropologie
( 1 906). She also published a work on the women
of Northeastern Siberia, in Russian, in the Rus¬
sian Anthropological Journal (1907).

After the Jesup Expedition, Jochelson led the
Aleut-Kamchatka Expedition of the Imperial Rus¬
sian Geographical Society in 1909—11. From
1912 to 1922, he was division curator of the
Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of
the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Peters-
burg/Petrograd and collaborator of the Asiatic
Museum of the academy. From 1922 until his
death in New York, November 1 , 1937, Jochelson
lived in the United States, where he was asso¬
ciated with the American Museum of Natural
History and the Carnegie Institution of Wash¬
ington ( American Anthropologist 1930:376,
1938:345).

Based on the results of the Jesup Expedition,
Boas discerned a close cultural affiliation be¬
tween eastern Siberia and the region of southern
Alaska and British Columbia; a cultural "break”
between the East Siberian tribes and the Eskimo;

and a "fundamental break" between the North¬
east Siberian tribes and the Evenk and Yakut.
He wrote:

Comparisons of type, language and culture make it
at once evident that the Northeast Siberian people
are much more closely akin to the Americans than to
other Asiatics. . . . The Chukchee, Koryak, Kamchadal,
and Yukaghir must be classed with the American race
rather than with the Asiatic race (Boas 1905:99).

Boas believed that these Siberian tribes were
an offshoot of the American race. According to
his theory, Asians first migrated into the New
World during a period of reduced glaciation.
Advancing ice then separated the Asian and
American populations for a long enough time to
allow for physical differentiation; when the ice
melted, there was a reverse migration of Amer¬
ican Indians to Siberia where they came into
contact with other Asians moving northward
with the retreat of the ice.

Jochelson gave the name "Americanoids" to
the people descended from these hypothetical
reverse migrants. He was intrigued by Boas's
ideas and attempted to support the close affili¬
ation of the Americanoids and Amerindians with
evidence from mythology and folklore. Bogoras
also emphasized the closeness of the America¬
noids and the Amerindians. He wrote:

The mythology and folklore of northeastern Asia are
essentially different from the Uralo- Altaic mythology,
and point to a group of conceptions and a mode of
expression which have little relationship to those of
the interior of Siberia; on the contrary, they possess
affinities eastward along the shores of Bering sea to
the northwestern part of America. From an ethno¬
graphical point of view, the line dividing Asia and
America lies far southwestward of Bering strait (Bo¬
goras 1902:579).

The Jesup Expedition established the close
relationship of the populations of northwestern
North America and northeastern Asia and strongly
supported the view that the ancestors of the
Amerindians came from Asia. The effort of Boas,
Jochelson, and Bogoras to go beyond these
currently accepted points was not successful.
The Americanoid theory never attracted atten¬
tion and is today largely an historical curiosity.
Yet with many aspects of New and Old World
relationships currently hotly debated, the ideas
of Boas and his colleagues still inspire reflection.

The classic ethnographies and the irreplace¬
able museum collections, however, are the en¬
during monument of the Jesup North Pacific
Expedition. This accomplishment can never be
duplicated. For Boas and his colleagues, their
work for the expedition went a long way toward
establishing their scientific reputations. Jesup
may not have been fully aware of it at his death
in 1908, but he did succeed, as was his wish, in
attaching his name to scientific work of major
importance.

103

Young Laufer on the Amur

Laurel Kendall

In 1897, Franz Boas wrote to Berthold Laufer of
Cologne, a youthful scholar of oriental languages
and recent philosophy doctorate of the Univer¬
sity of Leipzig. The letter invited Laufer to
participate in the Jesup North Pacific Expedition,
to lead an expedition to the Amur River in
eastern Siberia "for the purpose of investigating
the peoples of that region and for making eth¬
nological collections” (AMNH: Boas to Laufer,
March 25, 1897).

Laufer arrived on Sakhalin Island on July 10,
1898, set to work, and by September could
report, in addition to his progress in Nivkhi
(Gilyak) and Tungus languages, ''I have taken
about [a] hundred measurements and carried on
investigations on the physical types and the
culture of those tribes, particularly regarding
their decorative art, of that I have obtained
interesting specimens together with good ex¬
planations, daily life, fishing and hunting, social
organization, shamanism, medicine and so on;
as to their healing methods, I got a very impor¬
tant collection of amulets . . . [for protection]
from diseases and representing the figures of
various animals.” He may not have been enthu¬
siastic about taking head measurements, re¬
porting near frustration in his attempts to apply
calipers to the Ainu. "The people were afraid
that they would die at once after submitting to
this process. Although I had their confidence, I
failed . . . even after offering them presents which
they considered of great value. I succeeded in
measuring a single individual, a man of imposing
stature, who, after the measurements had been
taken, fell prostrate on the floor, the picture of
despair, groaning, 'Now I am going to die to¬
morrow!' 'Have some brandy and you will be
all right.' "

More useful was the recorder, and Laufer
reports the taking of songs and tales on wax
cylinders when the winter cold did not freeze
his equipment to inactivity. He wrote to Boas of
the young Nivkhi woman who, after singing into
the recording instrument, declared, "It took me
so long to learn this song and this thing here
learned it at once without making any mistakes.
There surely is a man or a devil in this box
which imitates me!”

After several months on Sakhalin, he re¬
quested "a small instant camera. ... I am afraid
that many interesting things I come across will
be lost forever if I can't take a picture” (Laufer
to Boas, March 4, 1899). Boas recommended
that Laufer hire a professional photographer (fig.

22). With an eye toward future museum exhibits,
he also requested images of "one or two of the
most characteristic occupations and ceremonials
of the people, which we could utilize for arrang¬
ing a group or two illustrating some of the most
salient features of their life."

The scholar of oriental languages did, indeed,
have an appetite for fieldwork and offered only
the rarest complaint. Almost offhandedly, he
mentions his scrapes with highwaymen, influ¬
enza, and a near drowning in icy water when
his sleigh broke through thin ice. After his
difficult first winter in the field, he complains,
over a misunderstanding about reimbursement,
that tradesmen are better remunerated than "a
learned man who puts his health and life at
stake” exploring, and at the very end of his
Amur trip concedes that the 16 months of
hardship and loneliness resulted in an "extraor¬
dinary state of nervousness [such as] I [had]
never experienced before.”

As a collector, Laufer experienced the com¬
mon frustration that others had been there
before him. He appealed to Boas for funds to
make a significant collection. "For some time
the natives have known the real value of their
possessions and what they can get for them.
The demand for their things, from Russian am¬
ateurs and dealers alike, is very high and so the
prices are going up. . . . There is absolutely noth¬
ing you could get for free from [the Nivkhi].
They even want payment for trivial communi¬
cation in money, tobacco, tea, malt spirits etc.”
Although Laufer fulfilled his mandate to provide
a comprehensive selection of artifacts, his col¬
lection bears the mark of his own scholarly
interests and aesthetic judgments. Ritual life is
well represented, and he seems to have been
utterly captivated by the rich embroideries and
applique work of the Nanai and their neighbors.

Laufer' s published contribution to the ethnog¬
raphy of Sakhalin Island and the Amur region
is disappointingly spare. His major monograph
on the Jesup material (Laufer 1902) is not the
intended comprehensive ethnography but rather
a meticulous study of decorative motifs, lavishly
illustrated with collection pieces. Even so, he
affirms the value of fieldwork, arguing that
"ornaments should not be regarded as enigmas
which can be easily puzzled out by the homey
fireside. . . . They . . . receive proper explana¬
tion from the lips of their creators" (Laufer
1902:1).

119. Berthold Laufer
AMNH neg. 125308
Berthold Laufer (1874-1934) was the
first member of the Siberian team to
join the Jesup Expedition. Fresh from
his doctorate in Leipzig, he began
fieldwork in Sakhalin in 1898. Boas's
terms: $500 per year in the field,
plus living expenses.

Laufer spent one year on Sakhalin
studying Nivkhi (Gilyak), Evenk (Tun¬
gus), and Ainu, and a second work¬
ing with the Nanai (Goldi) and other
groups in the Lower Amur. Com¬
pared to Bogoras and Jochelson, his
achievements were modest. For Lau¬
fer, the Jesup Expedition was a
learning experience; he later became
a productive scholar of Asian culture,
holding positions at the American
Museum of Natural History and the
Field Museum in Chicago.

Opposite:

"Kodiak Island Toyon [Chief] Named
Nangquk, Baptised Nikita [from
Three Saints Bay]" (Mikhail Tik-
hanov, 1817, RIPSA 2115)

104

nti of TiltiS

j*r in

-"■XV-

'V Wl Iff* 'I?/- ' ■ :'v

$ jjjpi

. ■ :* 4@ i «

Beringia: An Ice Age View

Steven B. Young

Waves that beat against the shores around
Bering Strait often have a troubled, petulant air.
They are short, steep, broken into a welter of
spray and crosscurrents. They often show a
dirty cast of perturbed bottom sediments, and
they are mean and tricky to navigate in an open
30-foot umiak. For the past 15,000 years, the
waves have been in a winning war with the
land. The city of Nome constantly fights for its
waterfront, casting thousands of tons of ledge
rock against the choppy, bullish breakers.

We often think of sea level as being one of
the few fixed, immutable things in this world.
We know exactly how tall Mount Denali is, and
if the figures were shown to be in error, we
would think it was because we had mismeasured
the mountain or it had sunk or risen like an
immense toy boat floating in a sea of continental
rock. Over the long term, though, sea level is
about as undependable a geographic feature as
can be found. In the course of the last 15,000
years it has risen something like 300 feet, as
the last Ice Age glaciers retreated from northern
lands and refilled the ocean basins. Even this
hasn't been a simple process. The glaciers gave
way grudgingly. A few decades of warm sum¬
mers and the waves lapped inland by a few
inches or feet. A siege of cold, snowy winters
and the sea stabilized for a time, perhaps even
sank back in its bed a few centimeters. Overall,
though, the past 15 millennia have been a time
of advancing seas, with the greatest rise occur¬
ring during the period of perhaps 12,000 to
8,000 years ago. There were corresponding
worldwide sea lowerings at various times. An
important one occurred between roughly 25,000
and 18,000 years ago, although the seas were
apparently a bit lower at the start of that period
than they are now.

When we think of the world in the throes of
an ice age, we tend to see the northlands
disappearing under a mantle of deep ice, such
as now covers Greenland. We think of arctic
animals — reindeer, woolly mammoths, cave
bears — moving southward over the generations
as the frost deepens in the ground and the
snowbound season lengthens. In truth, though,
many of the high-latitude lands never were lost

beneath ice. Within hundreds of miles of the
Bering Strait, there have never, in the past
million years, been more than relatively small,
local glaciers. There are bigger glaciers within
an hour's drive of Anchorage than ever were
found in most of western Alaska during the last
ice age.

What we have, then, in many far northern
regions, are huge areas of present-day dry land
that never were under ice and adjacent areas of
shallow sea floor — continental shelf — that emerge
as dry land each time the growing ice sheets
deplete the seas. We see northern geography
as a constantly changing interrelationship be¬
tween land, ice, and sea, and we see that the
land area itself is hardly diminished by advancing
glaciers, only relocated, and this largely at the
expense of shallow seas.

Nowhere in the world is this situation illus¬
trated better than in the vicinity of the Bering
Strait (fig. 121). The shallowly submerged con¬
tinental shelf extends southward halfway to the
Aleutian Islands and northward deep into the
Arctic. At a glacial maximum, the exposed sea
floor was a subcontinent more than 1000 miles
wide. We call this the Bering Land Bridge, but
no people crossing it would have known they
were on a bridge connecting two continents.
Most likely, no one ever really did cross it. Life
was probably much better on the old sea floor
than on the bleak fells and steppes of what is
now Alaska, where howling, frigid winds must
have hurled themselves down from the high ice
fields and kept the sky a dull mask of blowing
grit. Most denizens of Beringia, as we call the
ancient land area, probably lived out the gen¬
erations on the old sea floor and retreated into
the stony uplands only as the rising seas threat¬
ened.

Winters over much of Beringia would probably
have been bitter by even modern Siberian stan¬
dards. Summers, on the other hand, may have
been bright and fairly warm. Although there
were probably no forests, there may well have
been coppices of cottonwood and thick, dwarf
woodlands of scrub willow and perhaps alder.
Among the most striking differences between
ancient Beringia and the modern world would

106

120. Vegetation History in Alaska
Pollen produced by vegetation be¬
comes part of the geological record
when the grains are deposited in lake
sediments or peat bogs. Pollen dia¬
grams produced by counting percent¬
ages of pollen types from the bottom
to the top of a core taken from these
sediments can be used to reconstruct
vegetation history through time.

This diagram is a simplified one
such as might be derived from a loca¬
tion in central or western Alaska. It
represents some 16,000 years and
thus extends back to the height of
the last glacial advance. Three zones
are easily distinguished. Lowest and
oldest is an herb zone, dominated by
grass, sedge, and sage-brush (Artem¬
isia). The later birch zone seems to
indicate greater moisture and possi¬
ble warmth as the Ice Age ended and
the Bering Land Bridge was sub¬
merged. The top zone, dominated by
spruce, documents the spread of typi¬
cal boreal forest into a previously
treeless environment. The few spruce
grains in the lower level do not nec¬
essarily indicate the local presence of
spruce trees. They may have blown
long distances in the wind, or been
redeposited from older sediments. In
an actual diagram, many additional
minor pollen types would be repre¬
sented as well.

have been the animals who lived there. The
familiar caribou were around then, as were
musk-oxen and moose. But there were many
additional, exotic animals, some of immense size
and presence. Woolly mammoths, elephants with
high-domed skulls, hulking shoulders, enormous
tusks, and long, reddish brown hair roamed
Beringia at some times. Bison with long, straight
horns grazed in mixed herds with small buff-
gray horses; probably also included were the
saiga antelopes that now occur only in high Asia.
Following these herds were an odd array of
predators. Lions, cheetahs, and the strange sa¬
ber-toothed cats lay hidden in hollows and brush
patches. A huge, gangly bear, called the short¬
faced bear, probably was an active pursuer of
game rather than a scavenger, fisherman, and
opportunist like the modern grizzly. Small mam¬
mals and birds would also have been a mixture
of the familiar, the exotic, and the extinct. There
are also other large animals whose role is more
problematical. Mastodons and giant ground sloths
were most likely already long extinct by the
time of the height of the last glacial age. Beasts
such as camels, yaks, and wapiti may have been
part of the picture at some time or other. We
are still too short on bones and radiocarbon
dates to be able to evaluate their significance
over time.

We can see that the question "What was it
like in Beringia in the past?" is not a simple one.
We are dealing with an area the size of a small
continent, whose relationship between land and
sea altered so rapidly that one might well have
seen clear changes over a normal human life¬
time. Geographical changes would have been
accompanied by changes in climate, changes in
vegetation, changes in animal populations —
probably changes in human society. One of the
most important changes has to do with the
geographic relationship between Asia and North
America. During land bridge times, Beringia was
the easternmost extension of Asia. It was more
or less completely separated from North America
by a broad barrier of ice. Melting ice and rising
seas altered the relationship toward the Amer¬
ican side, although the minor barrier of the
Bering Strait really cuts Beringia more or less
in half.

It makes sense to divide the past 20,000 years
of Beringian environmental history into three
periods. These are closely correlated with events
recorded in the sediments of the floors of shallow
lakes throughout Beringia, through the deposi¬
tion of pollen from plants that grew nearby.
Changing vegetation results in different kinds
and proportions of pollen falling into the lakes,
and these changes can be shown graphically
(fig. 120). The interpretation of this information

Herb zone Birch zone Spruce zone

Artemisia

Sagebrush

Cyperaceae

Sedge

Gramineae

Grass

Salix

Willow

Alnus

Alder

Betula

Birch

Picea

Spruce

is, as suggested above, as much an art as a
science — without intuition the picture is flat and
dull, but the embellishments that make it work
are almost as much the result of a rich imagi¬
nation as they are of a scientific approach.

The lowest zone, extending back from roughly
13,000 years ago, is known to palynologists as
the herb zone. Its most striking feature is the
presence of relatively high amounts of pollen of
Artemisia, a large group of plants that includes
sagebrush as well as familiar garden herbs such
as tarragon and dusty miller. Grass and sedge
pollen are also common, but trees such as spruce
seem to have been rare or absent throughout
Beringia. Willow, on the other hand, was abun¬
dant. Poplar and aspen, whose pollen is fragile
and easily destroyed and which can apparently
subsist for millennia reproducing mainly by root
shoots, were probably part of the picture.

We see the Bering Land Bridge at this time
as a broad, rolling plain. Relief is provided by
stabilized sand dunes derived from the emerg¬
ence of the sea floor thousands of years earlier.
Since then, ground ice has built up in the
sediments, raising ridges and causing the for¬
mation of innumerable shallow thaw ponds. The
plain is cut by huge rivers. The Yukon, swollen
by summer melt of the great glaciers of the
Alaska Range, must traverse 500 miles more
land than it does now; it probably has captured
other major rivers such as the Kuskokwim. We
can imagine thousands of square miles of the
land bridge as being a morass of blind channels,
sloughs, cutoff lakes, and river bars, the whole
covered by a seemingly endless sea of scrub

107

121. The Bering Land Bridge and
Sites of the Siberian-American
Paleoarctic Culture

This map shows glaciers and coasts
as they would have appeared 14,000-
15,000 years ago (redrawn from
Hamilton et al. 1986). At this time
the unglaciated lowlands of Alaska
were linked to Asia by the broad Ber¬
ing Land Bridge, while at the same
time isolated from the rest of North
America by masses of glacial ice. As
climate warmed over the next several
thousand years, glaciers retreated,
sea level rose and cut through the
Land Bridge to create Bering Strait,
and the land ecosystem underwent
major changes, including extinctions
of some of the larger Ice Age mam¬
mal species. Human populations
spread into Alaska from Siberia
11,000-12,000 years ago or slightly
earlier, represented by sites of the
Paleoarctic culture. The microblades
found at these sites link the Paleoarc¬
tic people to earlier Siberian Upper
Paleolithic groups (fig. 122). (Site dis¬
tribution from West 1981, fig. 40.)

willow brush, swaying in the wind in summer,
anchoring drifts of the sparse snow in winter
and creating a nucleus for silt deposits during
flood times. Back from the rivers the terrain may
well have been similar to the steppes of interior
Asia. A thin vegetation cover built up of wiry
prairie grasses and dwarf sagebrush dominates
the ridge tops, while greener sedge meadows
lie in hollows and emerge from late-melting
snowbeds. Spring comes early after bitter win¬
ters, and the steppe undergoes a time of flow¬
ering — arctic poppies, anemones, primroses, and
dozens of other species — before the endless
drying winds of summer raise the glacial dust
of the river valleys and gray the landscape.

The picture probably changes quite dramati¬
cally along the southern coast of the land bridge.
We can imagine hundreds of miles of deeply
convoluted coastline: a land-sea of broad estu¬
aries, lagoon and barrier beach systems, salt
flats, sedge meadows, and towering dunes. The
landfast ice probably built up each winter, and
there were probably several months when the
offshore seas were dominated by shifting pack
ice. But there would also have been many months
of open water, a time when seals and beluga

whales abounded in the shallow bays and inlets.
Salmon would have invaded every stream, and
clouds of waterfowl would have congregated in
the lagoons, using them as staging grounds for
northward migrations as the rivers and ponds
of the interior opened up with the return of
summer. This environment, rich as it must have
been, must also have been difficult to master
for man and other terrestrial mammals. It is
hard to imagine a mammal living there who was
not an accomplished swimmer or a human who
was not a skilled boatman. We can speculate
that animals such as horses, bison, and mam¬
moths would have kept mainly to the interior,
perhaps wandering down to the grassy coastal
dunes during some winters. It needs to be said,
too, that this whole question of the nature of the
southern coast of the Bering Land Bridge is
based on the most tenuous evidence. The alter¬
native, though, is to leave it an empty slate.
Although we have no direct data telling us that
there were rivers full of fish, it makes no sense
to assume, therefore, that the rivers were empty
and sterile. But if we do accept the presence of
the fish, it is equally absurd to leave out seals,
cormorants, brown bears, and mink. Man, as we

122. Composite Knife
Facsimile made by Dennis Stanford
Upper Paleolithic: Kokorevo site,
Siberia, ca. 12,000 b.c.

Discoveries of early bone and stone
tools strongly suggest that all the na¬
tive peoples of the Americas can
ultimately trace their ancestry to the
Upper Paleolithic cultures of north¬
eastern Asia. To make implements
for hunting and butchering mammoths,
bison, and other large game, Upper
Paleolithic hunters glued segments of
small stone microblades into a slot
along the edge of a bone head, creat¬
ing a long straight cutting edge. Mi¬
croblades and the cores from which
they were struck occur as early as
20,000 b.c. in Siberian and Japanese
sites. Other stone tools from this era
include burins (tools for cutting bone
and ivory), skin scrapers, and projec¬
tile points (fig. 130).

108

have said, is more problematical, but if he was
in Beringia at all, it seems likely that he wandered
the sloughs and backwaters of the Bering Sea
coast and that he built tents or sod huts — or
even mammoth-bone houses such as those found
on the Russian steppes — on the low ridgetops.

Having gone this far with our speculations, it
is worth asking a few additional questions. For
example, what would the possibility have been
for coastal, boat-using people from the southern
Beringian coast to travel eastward along the
glaciated coast of the Gulf of Alaska, perhaps
coasting from one ice-free headland to another
in search of marine mammals, fish, and seabirds?
Similar voyages were made by later Eskimo in
northwest Greenland, and they led to new land
to the south. Could this have happened on the
Pacific shores of North America as the ice began
to wane? Another question is whether the hy¬
pothetical inhabitants of Beringia might have
been two populations, perhaps an inland group
that followed the mammoth and bison herds and
a coastal group that fished, hunted sea mammals,
and trapped migrating waterfowl. How might
this situation be reflected in the distribution of
language groups or other cultural patterns mil¬
lennia later? Would traces of these ancient
conditions still remain?

Whatever was the situation in southern Ber¬
ingia, the more marginal environments to the
north and east can probably be reconstructed
with a bit more confidence, since the possibilities
are narrower. The steppe became sparser and
increasingly frigid to the north, ending against
a permanently ice-locked sea. This sea was
probably almost totally barren compared with
today's Arctic Ocean. The nearest retreat from
the permanent sea ice would have been thou¬
sands of miles away in the Atlantic. There would
probably have been no walrus, no bowhead
whales, possibly a few ringed seals — perhaps
an occasional wandering seabird — and no peo¬
ple.

Deep in the interior of what is now Alaska
and the Chukchi Peninsula were grim, icebound
mountains, silt-covered floodplains, and endless
blowing dust. If we can imagine the high plans
of interior Asia even colder and more barren,
we probably have a good analog. And we can
imagine a sparse fauna — a few wild sheep per¬
haps, small burrowing mammals such as ground
squirrels, and marginal populations of predators
such as wolves and wolverines.

According to this picture, the heart of Beringia
was the land bridge itself. If there were huge
herds of game— mammoths, horses, bison, as
well as moose and caribou — they would most
likely have centered on the bridge, with only
stray, marginal groups finding their way into

the bleak valleys and high plains of the deep
interior. Imagine, then, the rapidly rising seas
of 12,000 years or so ago and the profound
effects they would have had on animals and
man. Equally profound was the effect on the
vegetation, and this would, of course, have been
transmitted to the other inhabitants.

Picture a time when sea levels may have risen
by several feet in the course of a human lifetime.
These rises would hardly have been a slow,
gentle drowning of beaches and river mouths.
Rather, a storm beyond anyone's imagination
might have swooped down on a winter day and
stripped away the entire line of barrier islands
from a lagoon that had been traditional hunting
grounds for generations. A decade or two later,
the process would have been repeated. Home
sites and hunting vantage points would have
been undercut by the waves, salt meadows
would have become angry shallow seas, and
bitter salt and rafts of sea ice would have killed
the willow brush and rich sedge meadows of
the river deltas. Each generation would have
seen new ravages. Finally the seas broke through
the remnants of the land barrier and the Arctic
Ocean connected with the Bering Sea for the
first time in ten millennia or more. No more
could a herd of mammoths wander into the
summer highlands of Chukotka and back down
to the winter grass and willow of the land bridge.

This seems to be the time that the game herds
went extinct. Some species survived on the
remaining uplands, where they formed the nu¬
clei of our modern caribou and moose herds.
Others, like the bison, lasted for millennia but
guttered out before historical times, leaving
relatives in the great plains to the south. Even
more distant are the remnants of the horses and
saiga antelopes, deep in Central Asia. And the
most magnificent of all, the woolly mammoths,
died out everywhere and forever — we shall not
see their like again.

We do not know for sure the cause of the
extinctions. It is plausible to suggest that the
rising seas had much to do with them, but there
must have been complex chains of causality
involved. They could have involved loss of some
necessary food component, loss of a traditional
migration route, changes in protection from
predation, most of all perhaps changes in human
predation. The situation is complicated by lack
of good data on the exact time of extinctions.
We have relatively few solid dates on the remains
of the ancient mammals, and the fact that the
latest individual we know of died, say, 15,000
years ago does not prove that their descendants
didn't last for a few more millennia. It is inter¬
esting to note, in any case, that the mammoths
had survived many a rising sea as previous

109

glaciers waxed and waned. Was it a new kind
of human culture that made the difference this
last time?

The pollen record shows a tremendous, wide¬
spread rise in birch pollen throughout Beringia
at about 1 3,000 years ago. We can best interpret
this birch zone as being the result of catastrophic
invasion of birch scrub over the entire Beringian
landscape. If the old steppe vegetation was
sparse, it was also widespread and, perhaps
most important, diverse and variable. A complex
diet would have been available for large herbi¬
vores, perhaps changing with the seasons as
well as geographically. If, then, the remnants of
the lands being lost to the rising seas were
overwhelmed by a bitter scrub of resinous birches,
the results for bison and mammoth could have
been disastrous.

Our mindset as postglacial beings of tropical
origin is to see the end of the Ice Age as a return
to normal. A long-horned bison or a mammoth
probably had a different perspective, as, very
likely, did the people who hunted them. We can
visualize shrinking, starving bands of the great
herd beasts as the seas returned, and we can
guess that this had an effect on human population
and culture, as it apparently did at the end of
the Ice Age in Europe.

In any case, the beginning of postglacial times,
which is conventionally placed at 10,000 years
ago, occurred at the end of the several-thousand-
year period that encompassed the destruction
of the land bridge and its unique environment.
We see changes occurring at 10,000 years ago
and thereafter, but none so radical or widespread
as the invasion of the birch scrub. The main

later changes seem to be the spread of spruce
into Beringia from some location to the east—
perhaps the lower Mackenzie River area — the
spread of alder and, presumably, tree birches,
probably the expansion of cottonwood and aspen
woodlands, and later the spread of peat lands
and muskeg. Not too long ago, we tended to
view the change from a glacial age to the
postglacial as being something of a flip-flop,
from full glacial conditions to something similar
to the environment of today. We know now that
the modern environment is the product of 10,000
years of evolution, building upon pieces of the
old land bridge environment, as well as invaders
and colonizers from afar. These changes, though,
are relatively subtle, and they tend to be local¬
ized when compared with the rising tide of birch
scrub. Without using an inordinate amount of
space, perhaps the best we can say is that the
Denbigh Flint people, halfway back to the Ice
Age, lived in a land that was recognizable as
modern Alaska — a land of spruce forests to the
inland; of shorelines near those of the present;
of caribou, moose, walrus, and seals and devoid
of mammoths, wild horses, and clouds of wind¬
blown silt. But it was a coastline without the
modern beach ridges, and probably a tundra
with many subtle differences from that of today.
If we were suddenly set down on Cape Denbigh
at 2500 b.c., we would probably be faced with
a slowly dawning awareness that things were
not quite as we were used to. We will be
uncovering the exact nature of these differences
for decades to come, and the main source of
this information will probably be the study of
the lives and culture of the people of Beringia.

123. Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta
One of the richest environments of
the North Pacific-Bering Sea region
is the vast Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
The delta was the breeding ground
for huge flocks of migratory water-
fowl, and its rivers, sloughs, and tun¬
dra ponds supported large stocks of
local and anadromous fish. Although
large whales were absent along its
coast, beluga were common, as were
seals, and walrus could be hunted
during their northward migration in
spring. Despite the hazards of delta
life, which included periodic destruc¬
tion of low-lying villages in winter
and spring floods, the resources of
the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta sup¬
ported 10,000 Eskimos in the late
19th century, the largest and densest
Eskimo population in the world.

110

Ancient Peoples of the North Pacific Rim

Christy G. Turner II

124. Arctic Dentition

McKenzie Eskimo: C.G. Turner neg.

1978:8 ASC 33

Peoples of arctic regions have distinc¬
tive dental characteristics that are il¬
lustrated in this photograph of a
Mackenzie Eskimo male: heavy occlu¬
sal wear across the tops of the teeth;
flattened outer surface; and chipping
of crown surfaces due to crushing
bones, use of teeth as tools, and
damage from sand and bone in food.

This essay briefly reviews some of the anatom¬
ical, genetic, and other biological research that
has been carried out on the living and prehistoric
inhabitants of Northeastern Siberia and Alaska.
The emphasis is on findings that help in under¬
standing where the original homeland of these
peoples was located, how they spread into the
Americas, and what can be inferred about their
later history from intergroup biological variation.

In assessing biological evidence of relation¬
ships among human populations, the fact needs
to be stressed that evolutionary rates differ
between the anthropological trinity of culture,
language, and biology. Of these, in the Arctic
as elsewhere, culture changes the most rapidly
because cultural adaptations (new behavior pat¬
terns, inventions) may be rapidly adopted and
taught to subsequent generations. At the other
extreme, biological adaptation depends on the
slow process of natural selection, and advanta¬
geous physical characteristics that may ran¬
domly appear take many generations to become

established in a population. Language changes
at an intermediate rate but generally drifts more
slowly than culture because it is not directly
affected by adaptive pressures.

Major adaptive problems had to be solved
before any humans could inhabit arctic Siberia
and North America. The new problems pre¬
sented by this environment included long pe¬
riods of intense cold, patchy and highly seasonal
food resources, and the lack of extensive support
networks of neighbors and kin faced by all
pioneers. The cultural solutions to these prob¬
lems, worked out at least 12,000 years ago,
included heat-saving tailored fur clothing and
domesticated dogs for hauling bulky fur bedding,
skin tents, and other household gear necessary
for a nomadic arctic lifeway. Also, at some point
in prehistory, dugout or bark-covered frame
boats evolved to produce light but durable skin-
covered boats for hunting on icy seas or where
wood was scarce, as in the Aleutians. Such craft
would have increased the resource base follow¬
ing the discovery of the ice-choked Sea of
Okhotsk with its millions of sea mammals. Fi¬
nally, social behavior emphasizing cooperation,
sharing, and rapid childhood learning of adult
skills would have been recognized early on as
critical in an arctic habitat.

Because the late Pleistocene colonizers of the
Arctic adapted mainly by cultural rather than
by biological means, there has been limited
genetic change since then. Modern arctic pop¬
ulations resemble the earliest known arctic in¬
habitants, as far as can be determined from the
shapes of bones and teeth (Debets 1948; Hrdlicka
1945). This relatively simple genetic history,
preserved in calcified morphology, allows us to
attempt reconstructions of the origins, ancestry,
and historical genetic relationships of modern
arctic groups with some confidence.

Not all biological qualities are equally useful
for origins research, however. Least valuable
are those that can be studied only in the living
and that are significantly influenced by the
environment. Examples of the latter include

1 1 1

weight, health, and age. The best features to
study are those that are under strong genetic
control and that can be examined in both living
and deceased people. Teeth, with their many
genetically determined crown and root struc¬
tures, are ideal for this purpose. The hard enamel
usually preserves well while buried in the ground,
so archeological teeth may be compared with
those of living populations. The influences of
age, sex, and health are minimal on dental
anatomy. Other genetic traits, such as blood
types, cannot be studied in ancient skeletal
remains. For these and other reasons this essay
will focus on the human population history of
eastern Siberia and Alaska as presently under¬
stood from studies of dental morphology.

Early descriptions of Aleut, Eskimo, and Si¬
berian physical appearances made by Russian
fur trappers and explorers noted that these
native peoples were of medium stature, robust,
moderately dark-skinned, and had dark eyes
partially obscured by a skin flap known as the
epicanthic fold. They also tended to have small
noses, straight black hair, and flat, nearly beard¬
less faces. One of the first published reports on
Aleut and Kodiak Island Eskimo crania appeared
in an 1859 memoir of the Russian Imperial
Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg, by C. E.
de Baer. His measurements showed these crania
to be similar to Japanese crania. Craniology
dominated the study of the origins and relation¬
ships of arctic people for almost a century after
de Baer's work, mainly because the face and
head were thought to be racially distinctive. The
shape of both are determined by the underlying
bony structure of the skull, which usually pre¬
serves well. Mummified or accidentally frozen
bodies, which can provide information on skin,
hair, and blood, are rare. Intentional mummifi¬
cation was practiced only in the eastern Aleu¬
tians and by the Pacific Eskimo along Alaska's
southern coast. Some of these mummies have
survived the destructive, wet environment be¬
cause they were placed in burial caves warmed
and dried by underground conduits to hot sub¬
terranean volcanic rock.

One of the first Americans to conduct natural
history studies in Alaska was William H. Dali
( 1877). In the 1870s Dali tested old Aleut village
sites on several islands and was the first Amer¬
ican scientist to interpret his archeological find¬
ings by stratigraphic and evolutionary principles.
He also described several crania he unearthed,
noting that eastern and western Aleuts were
very similar, although quite variable, and rather
specialized compared with crania belonging to
other northern groups he had available for com¬
parison. Without noting it specifically, Dali seems
to have recognized the evolutionary significance

of the marked geographic isolation that charac¬
terizes the Aleutian Islands.

Soon after Dali's pioneering archeology, work¬
ers in the newly emerging museum and univer¬
sity field of anthropology turned their attention
to western arctic and subarctic populations. The
extensive anthropometric surveys carried out
by members of the Jesup North Pacific Expedi¬
tion in Siberia and the Northwest Coast are an
invaluable human biological record collected at
a time when Russian and American admixture
to native populations was less than today. Ales
Hrdlicka carried out similar surveys for the
Smithsonian Institution on living and skeletal
Alaskan Aleuts and Eskimos in the 1930s in his
study on the peopling of the Americas, a research
objective to which Hrdlicka devoted much of his
life (Hrdlicka 1944, 1945). Plaster head casts
and measurements made in the field by the
Jesup Expedition, by Hrdlicka, and by Riley
Moore on St. Lawrence Island in 1912 have been
used in creating the mannequins in this exhibi¬
tion.

While craniological investigation, now
strengthened by evolutionary and genetic the¬
ory, profitably continues to the present day,
other scientific areas of inquiry have emerged.
Research into cold adaptation, be it physiologi¬
cal, anatomical, behavioral, or a combination of
all three, has developed following World War II.
Most of the identifiable cold adaptation by arctic
peoples is now seen as being accomplished
behaviorally and culturally with clothing and by
avoiding sweating, staying indoors in stormy
weather, consuming a diet rich in fat and oil for
energy, and by other simple but effective means.
Despite much research on the flat Asiatic face
structure, it still remains uncertain if this trait
is an evolutionary adaptation to cold stress.

In the 1940s blood-group genetics were added
to the research programs of arctic anthropolo¬
gists such as William S. Laughlin (1951). Despite
the official Soviet ban on genetics at this time,
some scientists in the USSR nevertheless man¬
aged to conduct blood-group studies on native
Siberians. By the 1950s it was evident that
Eskimo, Aleut, and native Siberian populations
possessed the B gene of the ABO blood system,
and American Indians lacked this allele. This,
along with the possible linguistic link between
Aleut, Eskimo, and Chukchi, as well as cranio¬
logical similarity (Alexseev 1979), suggested
that Aleuts and Eskimos were more closely
related to eastern Asians than were American
Indians, possibly because they entered the New
World later than did the ancestors of Indians.
Recently, this view has been reconsidered. Blood-
group genetic studies and osteological research
by E. Szathmary and N. S. Ossenberg (1978)

112

reveal the distinctiveness of Athapaskan-speak-
ing Indians from all other Indians and their
possibly closer relationship to Aleuts and Eski¬
mos. However, Soviet genetic studies on arctic
peoples have shown that recent admixture likely
has obscured the phylogenetic history hoped for
from studies of modern living populations. It has
been estimated, for example, that by 1970 as
many as 25 percent of all North Alaskan genes
were from non-Eskimo sources (Szathmary 1984).
Fortunately, prehistoric bones and teeth do not
have an admixture problem of this magnitude,
so osteological and dental research continues to
be important in understanding the origins, re¬
lationships, and evolution of the Bering Sea
Mongoloids.

As Russian explorers learned more about
Siberia and Alaska in the 1 8th and 1 9th centuries
it became evident that native population density
increased from north to south because of the
better food supply at lower latitudes. This eco¬
logical relationship is also reflected in body size
and stature. The far northern peoples are gen¬
erally shorter than those living to the south.
Stature and body build may be an adaptation to
northern conditions such as limited calcium and
sunlight, which can retard skeletal growth. Facial
flatness is possibly a cold adaptation because it,
too, decreases from north to south. Early an¬
thropologists gave head shape much taxonomic
weight for classifying groups of people, mainly
because it was thought to be an evolutionarily
neutral feature, but even today the mechanisms
responsible for such anatomical change have yet
to be identified, and its usefulness for differen¬
tiating prehistoric populations remains unclear.
Other distinctive features of arctic peoples, such
as medium trunk height combined with short
arms and legs, may be accentuated by differ¬
ential growth under the influence of cold stress.

In addition to the probable pressure from
natural selective forces, numerically small north¬
ern populations are subject to genetic bottle¬
necking (reduction or limitation of genetic vari¬
ability) caused by population crashes due to
regional starvation, poisoning, disease, or war¬
fare. This and inbreeding probably contributed
to some of the known arctic skeletal anomalies,
such as T. D. Stewart's (1973) finding that Es¬
kimo groups have frequent occurrences of de¬
fective neural arches. Aleuts differ somewhat
from their Eskimo linguistic cousins because of
random genetic changes that likely occurred in
the small founding populations of the isolated
Aleutian Islands. The senior scholar of the Aleuts,
William S. Laughlin, believes this genetic isola¬
tion extends back at least 8,000 years.

Finally, there are many interesting features
of Siberian and Alaskan skeletons and teeth that

are caused by environmental or cultural factors
rather than biological ones. For example, the
difficulty of the arctic lifeway shows up in the
many fractured and chipped teeth of its prehis¬
toric peoples. This damage occurred when bones
were crushed in the mouth to extract all possible
nutrient, or when teeth were used as tools when
fingers were rendered nearly useless by cold
exposure. When Russian explorers and fur hunt¬
ers first discovered Siberian and Alaskan Eski¬
mos and Aleuts, they found many individuals
with facial tattoos, bone pin-pierced nasal septa,
and ivory or stone lip plugs (labrets) worn in
slits cut through the lower lip or cheek. Years
of use eventually wore down the tooth surface
in contact with the labret, resulting in archeo-
logically recovered teeth with labret wear facets.
This form of facial ornamentation was in vogue
among Aleutian Islanders for at least 4,000
years. Another early Aleutian practice, one that
was discontinued before historic contact, was
extraction of anterior teeth. Intentional removal
of teeth is very old in eastern Asia, possibly
beginning as early as 17,000 years ago. Because
of the small amount of carbohydrate in the arctic
diet, no prehistoric Siberians or Alaskans had
cavities, although periodontal disease was ex¬
tremely common and often terribly severe. A
condition akin to tennis elbow was sometimes
present in adult males, the result of joint stress
caused by years of throwing harpoons and spears.
Finally, osteoarthritis, present even in young
adults, developed from cold exposure and activ¬
ity-related stress placed on the living skeleton.

Having, to a degree, characterized various
aspects of the physical anthropology of the arctic
and subarctic peoples of the North Pacific Rim,
let us turn to the three fundamental biological
questions posed at the outset of this essay: the
questions of origins, of the spread of arctic Asian
populations into the Americas, and of their
subsequent population histories. These prob¬
lems will be explored using information from
my own detailed examinations of thousands of
teeth, most of which were obtained from arche¬
ological populations by the various investigators
mentioned above. The arctic teeth used here
were studied by the author in museum skeletal
collections in Canada, Denmark, France, Japan,
the USA, and the USSR.1 Table 1 gives frequen¬
cies for a few of the more than two dozen dental
traits used in this analysis of arctic population
history. By comparing the frequencies, one can
get a rough idea of the similarities and differ¬
ences, and therefore the closeness of relation¬
ship, between the selected populations. How¬
ever, a quicker and clearer understanding of
affinity and history is gained from the diagrams
in figures 125—127.

113

East Siberian and Native American Origins

The probable biological affinity between the
populations studied is shown in figure 125. Any
pair linked by a short branch indicates a rela¬
tively close relationship, as seen between Egyp¬
tians and Europeans. Deep branching, such as
between Egyptians and North and South Amer¬
ican Indians, indicates a remote relationship.
Starting at the trunk of the tree, on the left side,
all groups first branch apart into a North Asian—
American cluster (Recent Japan, Macro-China,
American Arctic, Northeast Siberia— Amur,
Greater Northwest Coast, and North and South
America) and a non— North Asian— American clus¬
ter containing three subclusters. Dental traits
thus indicate that all Native Americans are more
closely related to northeastern Asians such as
Chinese and Japanese than they are to Euro¬
peans and that the ancestral origin of East
Siberian and Native American populations was
likely in eastern Asia. Because Native Americans
are more like Japanese and Chinese than like
Southeast Asians, the ancestral homeland was
probably in Northeast rather than Southeast
Asia. Within Northeast Asia the ancestral Native
American homeland was more likely in northern
China and Mongolia than in Japan. This is be¬
cause the Jomon people, quite dissimilar to
Native Americans, inhabitated Japan thousands
of years before the large migration of modern
Japanese from the mainland began around 300
b.c. The dental analysis also seems to rule out
southern Siberia as the ancestral home of Native
Americans. It can be concluded that the peoples
whose ways of life are illustrated in this exhi¬
bition arose from an ancestral stock in North
China— Mongolia. According to archeological
findings and estimated rates of dental evolution,
that stock lived about 20,000 years ago.

Examining the North Asia— American cluster
in more detail, the dendrogram shows American
arctic people are more like those of Northeast
Siberia— Amur than like American Indians. Thus,
we can hypothesize that at least two waves or
stocks of people — or possibly three — were in¬
volved in the initial peopling of the Americas.

How Did the Peopling of the Americas Occur?

Figure 126 is based on the same analytical
methods as figure 125, but with territorially
smaller groups. Again, the first branching sep¬
arates a large northern cluster made up of
Eskimo, Aleuts, and Northwest Coast Indians.
Other analyses of this sort have shown that all
North and South American Indians, except those
of the Northwest Coast, are closely related, so
figure 1 26 uses only three southern Indian series
to demonstrate this basic duality of New World
populations. When archeological information is

TABLE 1

Selected Dental Morphology of Beringian and Comparative Groups (%)*

Trait:

Tooth:

Shovel

UI1

1 -root

UP1

Carabelli
cusp UM1

6-cusp

LM1

4-cusp

LM2

Protostylid
cusp LM1

3-root

LM1

N & S America

Greater NW Coast

American Arctic

NE Siberia-Amur

Macro-China

Recent Japan

Jomon

South Siberia

Macro-early SE Asia

Europe

* Computer reference:

HCLS World

14. Sexes pooled.

U denotes

upper;

L, lower; 1.

incisor;

premolar; M, molar. Breakpoints for dichotomized intratrait variation are identified in Turner (1987).
Group sample sizes in most instances exceed 100 individuals per trait. Illustrations of these dental
traits can be found in Turner (1985).

125. Old World-New World
Dental Relationships

This evolutionary tree, or dendro¬
gram, is based on a computer analy¬
sis of 25 dental traits in thousands of
individuals belonging to the indicated
groups. The diagram indicates that
Northeast Asians and Native Ameri¬
cans are closely related. Therefore,
the ancestral homeland of people
who designed and crafted the objects
in this exhibition probably originated
in North China and Mongolia.

Egypt

USSR Upper Paleolithic
Ceylon

Northwest and Western Europe

Prehistoric Taiwan

Macro Recent Southeast Asia

Macro Early Southeast Asia

Eastern and Western Polynesia

Southern Siberia

lomon

Melanesia

Australia-Tasmania

Micronesia

Western Africa and Nubia Peninsula

Recent Japan

Macro China

American Arctic

Northeast Siberia and Amur

Greater Northwest Coast

North and South America

1 14

Point Hope
Eastern Aleuts
Western Aleuts
Kodiak

Central Maritime

Gulf of Georgia

St. Lawrence Island

Northern Maritime

Kachemak and Alaska Peninsula

Southern California

Panama

Northern and Central California

126. Western North American
Dental Relationships
This dendrogram suggests three mi¬
grations were involved in peopling
the New World. A basic duality of the
Native American population is seen
in the deep division between Califor¬
nia and Panamanian Natives from
those of the Mortwest Coast and
Alaska. A second division separates
Aleuts and Point Hope Eskimos from
Northwest Coast peoples.

127. North Pacific Dental Relation¬
ships

This diagram suggests a number of
historical relationships between peo¬
ples of the North Pacific, Bering* ,
and the Arctic. Details are discussed
in the text.

Point Hope
Yukon Athapaskan
Mackenzie
Point Barrow
Siberian Eskimo
Kodiak

Central Maritime
Northern Maritime
Eastern Aleuts
Western Aleuts
Amur

China and Mongolia
Southampton Island
St. Lawrence Island
Greenland

Eastern Siberian and Chukchi
Kachemak and Alaska Peninsula
Jomon

considered it becomes evident that most Amer¬
ican Indians are probably descended from the
founding population we associate with the mam¬
moth-hunting Paleoindian Clovis culture. This
hypothesis is also supported by linguistic and
other biological evidence (Greenberg et al. 1986).

The more complex upper cluster can be in¬
terpreted several ways. The interpretation fa¬
vored by the author is that it contains two
subclusters. One includes the Point Hope Eskimo
and all Aleuts. The second includes all the
Northwest Coast Indians from the northern and
central Maritime districts (southeastern Alaska
and British Columbia) and those of the Gulf of
Georgia and Puget Sound. It also includes the
St. Lawrence Island Eskimo and the Kodiak
Islanders. On cultural grounds Kodiak prehistory
has usually been thought of as a product of
Eskimo, but Kodiak dental affinity is with the
Northwest Coast Indians. Why the St. Lawrence
Islanders cluster with Northwest Coast is un¬
certain. More than likely this is a statistical
mismatch resulting from the fact that St. Law¬
rence Island Eskimo, although Siberian Eskimo
by linguistic affiliation, have been joined artifi¬
cially with the Northwest Coast cluster because
no other Siberian group was included in this
particular study for them to link up with. As
shown in figure 127, given a Siberian choice,
St. Lawrence Islanders do link with Siberians
rather than Alaskans. A question remains con¬
cerning the population history of the two closely
related northern clusters. Did they separate in
Alaska or, as this author favors for a number of
reasons (Turner 1985), in Siberia?

If we follow the latter interpretation of the
dental, archeological, and linguistic evidence,
the peopling of the New World may be sum¬
marized as follows. The first wave of migration
was composed of the Paleoindians, who moved
through the Beringian region sometime between
14,000 and 12,000 years ago and became es¬
tablished in lower continental North and South
America about 12,000 or 11,500 years ago as
Clovis and other fluted point cultures. Between
10,000 and 11,000 years ago, sites of the Pa-
leoarctic microblade tradition in the interior of
Alaska and eastern Siberia give evidence for the
expansion into the New World of the ancestors
of the Athapaskan and Northwest Coast Indians.
A third wave of New World settlement from
Siberia, also thought to date to this early period,
is represented by the ancestral Eskimo-Aleuts,
who settled along the coasts of mainland Alaska
and the Aleutian Island chain. The archeological
evidence for this movement has been largely
destroyed by rising sea levels, although sites in
Japan, the Amur River region, and Anangula
(6000 B.c.) in the Eastern Aleutians probably
relate to this maritime occupation (Laughlin 1 980)

115

Northeast Asian and Northern North America:
Biology and History

Figure 127 takes a detailed look at groups on
both sides of the Bering Sea. Examining the
diagram from left to right as previously, the first
branch point separates the prehistoric Jomon
people of Japan from all other groups. The Jomon
people were not members of the Northeastern
Siberian— Alaskan population system. The next
branch point separates most of the remaining
groups from a cluster made up of Eskimo from
St. Lawrence Island and Greenland, East Sibe¬
rians, and Chukchi, and people of Kachemak Bay
and the Alaska Peninsula, usually thought of as
Eskimo. With the exception of the Greenland
Eskimo, whose recent arrival can be traced back
to northern Alaska, this group is characterized
as having lived around the shores of the Bering
Sea, suggesting a coastal economic, social, and
genetic network that did not extend into the
Aleutian or Northwest Coast areas. The network
may best be related to the expansion of the
Eskimo population bearing the Thule culture.
The strong separation of this cluster from the
other Native Americans suggests much genetic
isolation, although it might also indicate a more
recent Siberian rather than early Alaskan origin.

As expected on the basis of geographic dis¬
tance, the Amur and China-Mongolia series are
considerably removed from the remaining groups
in the upper cluster but are clearly more like
Northeast Siberians and Native Americans than
were the Jomon people.

The top five groups of the upper cluster (Point
Hope, Yukon Athapaskan, Mackenzie Eskimo,
Point Barrow Eskimo, and Siberian Eskimo) are
all far northern Americans except for the Sibe¬
rians. However, such American archeologists as
Henry Collins long ago pointed out that Siberian
Eskimos probably migrated to Siberia from Alaska
many generations ago. The anomalous Eskimo
affinity of the Yukon Athapaskans in this study
seems likely to have resulted from problems of
Russian and Eskimo admixture, or both, for in
other studies they cluster with Northwest Coast
Indians.

The major interpretation to make of this far
north American subcluster is that it is not es¬

pecially similar to the more Siberian cluster
containing the Chukchi. This suggests that Es¬
kimos have been genetically separated from
Siberian populations for about as long a period
of time as have Indians. The case of the Siberian
Eskimo indicates that some population move¬
ment and genetic exchange has occurred at
Bering Strait, however.

The Aleut subcluster is distinctive, supporting
the aforementioned view of a long period of
genetic isolation. Only minor differences have
evolved between eastern and western Aleuts, a
fascinating biological finding that matches the
relative homogeneity of the prehistoric Aleut
culture found throughout the archipelago and
other archeological evidence that documents
marked cultural stability and isolation through
time. Taken together, these facts suggest that
the Aleut objects on exhibit, and the early
observations of Aleut life made by the Russian
priest Ioann Veniaminov and others, might well
portray Aleut ways as they were practiced for
many millennia.

The final subcluster is the Northwest Coast
and Kodiak branch. Apparently, despite their
more recent cultural affinity to Eskimos, the
prehistoric people of Kodiak Island were genet¬
ically more related to Indians than to Eskimos,
a possibility hinted at in scraps of ethnographic
lore. The Kodiak situation should serve as a
useful reminder that cultural history is not pre¬
determined by biological ancestry.

In the final analysis, genetic descent can only
be evaluated with the physical remains of people
themselves. This is the ultimate reason for the
need to preserve human biological collections
and conduct skeletal and paleodental research.

Bering Strait is indeed the crossroads of con¬
tinents. But, not until the Russian discovery of
Alaska was it traveled by any people other than
the descendants of those first families that moved
northward from North China and Mongolia into
virgin Northeastern Siberia about 15,000 years
ago. This story, which began in very ancient
times, can be told because of the genetic history
embedded in the coded anatomy of teeth, bones,
and many other biological features.

116

Prehistory of Siberia and the Bering Sea

S. A. Arutiunov and William W. Fitzhugh

128. Cultures and Sites of the North
Pacific-Bering Sea Region

For many years it has been supposed that the
first people to move into North America passed
over the ancient land bridge that joined Siberia
and the American continent at the end of the
Ice Age. If you were to take the date of the
peopling of America as between 25,000 and

14,000 years ago, as some archeologists have
claimed, the first inhabitants of North America
must have crossed the Bering Land Bridge at a
time when large portions of Europe, Siberia,
Canada, and the northern United States were
covered by great masses of ice. At this time

117

glacial conditions prevailed throughout the
northern hemisphere. At its peak 18,000 years
ago, sea level was 100 meters lower than at
present, and the lateral extent of the exposed
sea floor from the Arctic Ocean to the Pacific
would have been nearly 1,000 miles wide. This
would hardly have been a land "bridge'' at all
but rather a huge continental land mass.

However, if you believe, as most cautious
archeologists do, that man migrated into the
Americas about 13,000 years ago (fig. 121),
humans could not have traveled over the surface
of this land bridge. By this time the floors of the
Bering and Chukchi seas had already been sub¬
merged by the rising sea levels resulting from
the melting of the Ice Age glaciers, and man
must either have entered North America over
the frozen sea ice in winter or have crossed the
waters of Bering Strait by boat. Archeologists
have not solved these questions of the first
Beringian migrations largely because no remains

that are unquestionably older than 1 1,500 years
have yet been found either in Chukotka or in
Alaska.

Whichever dating one prefers, few sites are
known even of the 11,500-year period. Most
early coastal sites of early man in the Beringian
region were either destroyed initially by rising
sea levels at the end of the Pleistocene or by
erosion and submergence that has characterized
much of this region's geomorphology in the
Holocene, the period from the end of the Pleis¬
tocene to the present. The sea continues to
encroach upon the land even today, and some
capes, pebble spits, and shorelines on which the
remains of ancient settlements have been stud¬
ied as recently as the 1950s no longer exist.
Nevertheless many archeological remains have
been discovered that provide information on the
prehistory of the North Pacific and Bering Sea
region.

129 Early Man in Siberia
Sakhalin Upper Paleolithic: SKRM
(upper) 4072-3, 4072-2, 14, 15, 16,
18, 9; (lower) 4072-4, 7, 1
This assemblage of obsidian tools,
from the site of Sokol, dating to
18,000-16,000 b.c., is typical of later
Upper Paleolithic cultures of Siberia.
Diagnostic tools include wedge-
shaped cores (lower right) from
which blades and microblades were
struck for use as knives and compos¬
ite tools (fig. 122), and as blanks for
triangular points whose bases were
later thinned for use in slotted hafts.
Burins, flake knives, and pointed side-
scrapers also occur. Other sites, such
as Ushki in Kamchatka, contain bi¬
facial stemmed and leaf-shaped
points. Similarities between these
complexes and the Diuktai complex
of central Yakutia and microblade
sites in Japan demonstrate the exist¬
ence of a widespread Late Paleolithic
horizon from which American cul¬
tures must have originated.

130. Takoie II: Proto- Paleoindian?
Siberian Upper Paleolithic: SKRM
(upper) 3670-83, 107, 54, 105, 99,

52, 44; (lower) 795-3764-2, 1; 3670-
194, 45, 113

An assemblage excavated in 1973 by
Valerii Shubin from the site of Takoie
11 on Sakhalin Island contains a more
highly developed tool inventory dat¬
ing to 16,000-14,000 b.c. Unifacial
core and blade technology continues
as the basis for the industry. A vari¬
ety of microblade cores, microblades,
endscrapers, and convergent sides-
crapers occur. Most interesting are
triangular points of various sizes
made on blades, which have carefully
thinned bases and partial bifacial
flaking. This combination of features
begins to resemble a prototype as¬
semblage for American Paleoindian
culture.

118

131. Early Man in Alaska
Paleoindian Culture: NMNH 391806
This 11,000-year-old fluted point dis¬
covered on the surface near the head¬
waters of the Utukok River in 1947
(Thompson 1948) was the first firm
evidence of Paleoindian fluted point
culture in Alaska. Typical of Clovis
and Folsom points used by the first
well-documented Indian cultures of
the Americas, such points have no
suitable prototypes in the New
World. The presence of fluted points
in Alaska suggests that Siberia —
poorly known archeologically — may
be their place of origin. In fact, possi¬
ble prototype technologies containing
concave base unifacial points made
on prismatic blades, like the Takoie II
complex in Sakhalin (fig. 130),
strengthen the case for Siberian
origins.

Early Man in Siberia and Alaska

Contrary to popular belief, the Beringian region
was not glaciated during the Pleistocene ice age,
and much of Siberia and Alaska was accessible
to human habitation. The dry, cold tundra and
steppe lands, which had little snow, were rich
in grasses and in wildlife that grazed on them.
In southern Chukotka and Kamchatka — where
the grassy steppe was interspersed with stands
of trees — mammoths, bison, and caribou were
plentiful. The climate was severe but was still
suitable for paleolithic hunters. Similar condi¬
tions prevailed on the Bering Land Bridge, but
much of modern-day Alaska was extremely
inhospitable.

The most ancient finds from Northeast Asia
were discovered by N. N. Dikov at Ushki along¬
side a lake in the valley of the Kamchatka River
(fig. 121; Dikov 1965, 1968). Here buried living
floors and stratigraphic levels document cultures
occupying Kamchatka over thousands of years,
beginning about 14,000 years ago. Early Ushki,
the earliest culture found (Level VII), contains
bifacial (chipped on both sides) leaf-shaped knives,
stemmed points, and gravers, as well as a human
burial with stone pendants and beads. In Level
VI, a culture dating to 12,000 or 10,000 years
ago known as Late Ushki was found to use
elongated leaf-shaped bifacial knives, small
wedge-shaped microcores and microblades (fig.
122), gravers, burins, scrapers, and possibly
labrets and fishing-related art. Late Ushki shares
microblades and leaf-shaped bifaces with the
Diuktai Paleolithic culture of central Yakutia and

132. Paleo arctic Tradition
Denali complex: (left to right) UAFM
UA 77-14-3884,-1591; DCr 73-24,
-47,-48,-13,-46; 76-155-4097; 76-
155-3269; 77-44-2659

small microblade sites in Japan, as well as a
variety of Alaskan sites. Among the latter are

A large number of sites containing
assemblages with wedge-shaped
cores and microblades, and less fre¬
quently with bifacial leaf-shaped bi¬
faces, occur in both Siberia and
Alaska at 9,000-10,000 b.c. These
sites comprise the Siberian-Alaskan
Paleoarctic Tradition, with clear roots
in the Siberian Upper Paleolithic, and
document a major population move¬
ment of hunting cultures into the
New World.

Ground Hog Bay and Hidden Falls on the North¬
west Coast; Healy Lake, Dry Creek, Ugashik,
Akmak, and the Denali complex materials (fig.
1 21 ).Just how similar the cultures of Siberia and
Alaska were at this time cannot yet be deter¬
mined, but the presence of a Siberian-American
Paleoarctic tradition immediately following the
submergence of the Beringian Land Bridge ap¬
pears evident.

The existence of these early Siberian-Alaskan
crossties raises the perplexing problem of Amer¬
ican Paleoindian relationships with Siberia. Re¬
mains of Paleoindian Clovis (fluted point) cul¬
tures have been found throughout most regions
of North America where they date to ca. 9500
b.c. Fluted points also have been found in west¬
ern Canada and interior Alaska in a trail leading
tantalizingly toward Siberia. Yet, to date, the
search for fluted points in Siberia has been
fruitless, nor have prototype points been found
outside the New World. Hence this first truly
American technology remains anomalous to the
seemingly unrelated Siberian-American Paleo¬
arctic horizon.

The people who left these early sites in Siberia
and Alaska can hardly be considered as direct
ancestors of the people who inhabited these
areas in the historic period. Undoubtedly, many
subsequent movements of peoples and cultural
changes have obscured the historical and ethnic
trails of peoples over the intervening millennia.
Nevertheless, it may turn out, as Dikov has
suggested, that the culture represented in Level
VI at Ushki was the basis for diversification in
Alaska into proto-Eskimo (Denbigh) cultures on
the one hand and proto-Aleut (Anangula) on the
other, although most American specialists prefer
to remain uncommitted on this point.

At the end of the Pleistocene and beginning
of the Holocene about 10,000 years ago, major
changes occurred in the environment of north¬
eastern Asia. Glaciers disappeared, sea levels
rose, and the shoreline took on its present shape
(fig. 121). Climate became more humid and wet,
and swampy tundra appeared in place of the
dry steppe of the Ice Age landscape. Mammoths
and bison died out, and the only remaining large
game animal of the tundra of economic impor¬
tance to man was the caribou. In coastal regions,
the formation of Bering Strait, connecting the
Arctic and Pacific Oceans, and the general warm¬
ing of the seas and reduction of sea ice created
ideal conditions for sea mammals such as seals,
sea lions, walruses, and whales. From this time
on the peoples of Northeast Asia were primarily
fishermen and hunters of caribou or sea mam¬
mals.

119

The Siberian Neolithic

Early Holocene levels at Ushki record the begin¬
ning of a new economy. Judging from the large
number of burned fish bones, fishing began to
play an important role in subsistence at this
time. Later, the end of the mid-Holocene climatic
optimum coincides with the expansion in Kam¬
chatka of neolithic hunting and fishing cultures
dating to the third and second millennium b.c.,
traces of which have been found by Dikov both
at Ushki and at sites on the western shores of
Kamchatka. Related cultures have been found
in Chukotka in the area of the Amguema River
and in the Malta Mesolithic in the Kolyma River
basin. Similar changes also occur along the
Pacific coast of Alaska and on the Aleutian
Islands where settled village life and developed
maritime economies are noted in the Sandy
Beach and Ocean Bay traditions. It is quite
conceivable, even probable, that these parallel
developments in Kamchatka and Alaska were
historically linked. Further development of neo¬
lithic cultures in Kamchatka, including the ap¬
pearance in the second millennium b.c. of ce¬
ramics, ground slate knives, and oil lamps, as
well as other elements, led to the formation of
the Tar'ia neolithic culture. This culture has
some Eskaleut traits (for example, lip ornaments
known as labrets) but generally is considered as
belonging to cultures of the ancient Itelmen.
Houses of the Tar'ia culture, in contrast to the
earlier tentlike houses of paleolithic and meso¬
lithic cultures, were large semisubterranean sod
and log-walled structures with rooftop smoke-
hole entrances similar to dwellings of the

ethnographically known Itelmen and Koryak
peoples, and also to house types of prehistoric
and historic peoples of western Alaska, the
Aleutians, and Kodiak Island. In short, the Tar'ia
culture continues the development toward an
Eskaleut type of culture begun in the early
Neolithic period in Siberia, a way of life that was
beginning to be shared widely by peoples
throughout the North Pacific coastal region.

Archeological sites of the late Paleolithic and
Mesolithic are known to a much lesser extent in
Chukotka than in Kamchatka. Those that are
known seem related to the Malta Mesolithic from
the Kolyma basin and may represent movement
of some of the ancestors of the Itelmen from
eastern Siberia to Chukotka and Kamchatka.

By the third millennium b.c. in Chukotka,
neolithic cultures had developed ceramics dec¬
orated with net impressions, and later, by the
beginning of the first millennium, with cord-
marked impressions. These cultures, designated
by Dikov as Northern Chukotka and Ust'-Belaia,
have clear parallels with the large suite of
Ymyiakhtakh cultures of northern and central
Yakutiia that date to the same period and must
have been important components in the forma¬
tion of ancient Chukchi and Koryak cultures.

Ust'-Belaia peoples were partially sedentary
and were based on hunting the massive herds
of caribou that migrated across the tundra (Dikov
1965). Their summer camps were located at the
river crossings used by these herds. Fishing
provided an important supplementary food source.
Burial sites contain skeletal remains of people

133. "Nefertiti" of the Amur (cast)
Siberian Neolithic: M1HPP Kn-63-
48090

Excavations in 1965 in a Neolithic
dwelling dating to the 4th-3rd millen¬
nium b.c., uncovered a burnished,
fired clay female bust. Resembling
armless ethnograhic figurines known
as sevons (spirits of illness and sha¬
man's helpers) and dzhulins (female
house guardians (fig. 243), such figu¬
rines suggest ancient roots for 19th-
century art and beliefs.

134. Sakhalin Harpoons

Neolithic: SKRM 70-214, 213, 219,
216

A wide variety of harpoon types char¬
acterizes the later prehistory of the
southern Okhotsk Sea region. Deco¬
rated with sculptural and engraved
designs, these toggling harpoon
styles differ greatly from Eskimo
types, indicating isolation from the
center of Eskimo development in the
Bering Sea. The nontoggling harpoon
(right), however, is similar to Aleut
forms and suggests contacts with the
western Aleutians.

135. Boat Model
Old Bering Sea culture
MAE 6479/11-407
Skin-covered watercraft were prob¬
ably used in the North Pacific as
early as 10,000 years ago. This
2,000-year-old ivory model from an
Ekven grave has a bifurcated bow
and stem similar to those found on
modem Eskimo umiaks, and its cock¬
pit face recalls the use of human face
plaques in Bering Sea Eskimo kayaks
(fig. 198). The face, whale images,
and grave find location suggest this
model was used in hunting ritual
rather than as a toy (pp. 255, fig.
344).

physically intermediate between the modern
Chukchi and the continental Mongolids of central
Siberia. Grave finds include stone implements
and ceramics with check-stamped and hatched
decoration typical of Ymyiakhtakh culture. Fu¬
neral ceremony included partial cremation. Along
with the stone inventory there are also bronze
tools originating from neighboring Yakutia and
dating to the second millennium b.c. Toggling
harpoon heads similar in type to those used by
the Dorset Eskimo of the Canadian Arctic have
also been found.

The finding of toggling harpoon heads dem¬
onstrates that by 1500 b.c. peoples of north¬
eastern Asia had developed efficient methods

for hunting sea mammals. Toggling harpoons
similar to Ust'-Belaia finds, dating to the same
period, have been found at Chertov Ovrag on
Wrangel Island and at ancient Eskimo sites
around Bering Strait. By this route we arrive at
the question of the origin of Eskimo culture and
its northern sea mammal hunting adaptation.
Here we need to remember that incorporation
into a single complex of Eskimo language, cul¬
ture, and even physical type (which is close to
that of the Chukchi) need not imply a single
evolutionary development. These strands of his¬
torically known Eskimo life may have arisen
independently among groups with different
backgrounds and physical makeup.

136. Hat Ornaments
Old Bering Sea culture
MAE 6587-298, 6587-300
Continuity in hunting ritual between
Old Bering Sea and 19th-century Ber¬
ing Sea Eskimos (fig. 201) is suggested
by these hunting hat ornaments from
an Old Bering Sea grave. The crest
piece on the right has jet eye inlays,
sketetized body markings, and holes
for hair and wood plug inserts.

The North Bering and Chukchi seas contain three
different ecological regions. The first, western
Alaska, has diverse subsistence opportunities
based on sea mammals, caribou, birds, and fish.
The second region, Bering Strait, is unique for
its wealth of sea mammals, especially walrus
and whales, and absence or near absence of
caribou. The third is the mountainous Chukotka
Peninsula, which owing to its limited land fauna
supported a relatively impoverished hunting
culture before the introduction of reindeer
breeding. These three regions figure importantly
in the history of Eskimo cultures, a subject that
has intrigued scholars since the early 1800s.

Theories of Eskimo origins have variously
supported Canadian or Bering Sea theories for
more than a century. Finally, in the 1930s the
issue was resolved with excavations at St. Law¬
rence Island by Henry Collins, whose work
revealed 2,000 years of Eskimo development in
Bering Strait. However, since Collins's oldest
sites, representing the Okvik and Old Bering Sea
cultures, were fully developed and not rudimen¬
tary, the search for Eskimo origins was not finally
settled. Soviet archeologists see proto-Eskimo
features in neolithic Kamchatkan and Chukotkan
prehistory, while American archeologists em¬
phasize early western Alaskan cultures such as

Norton and Choris as the most immediate ances¬
tors of Old Bering Sea, with Palisades, Old
Whaling, and earlier cultures of the Arctic Small
Tool tradition as the earliest identifiable proto-
Eskimo cultures, ca. 4,000 years ago. Beyond
this, the trail of Eskimo origins vanishes in the
Bering Sea fog.

Until now, considerable attention has been
paid to the processes of ethnocultural evolution
that took place on the American side of Bering
Strait, because only in that location is it possible
to follow the gradual development of moderately
specialized cultures into specialized proto-Es¬
kimo cultures. We suppose that this process
reflects not so much a spontaneous local evo¬
lution as an addition to a local American sub¬
strate of new characteristics, the infiltration of
which took place through the Bering Strait from
Asia.

Here it is useful to look at Siberian prehistory.
From the end of the third to the end of the
second millennium b.c. on the expansive wa¬
tershed of the Arctic Ocean, from the Olenek
River to the Amguema, there existed several
variants of the neolithic Ymyiakhtakh culture
that have been studied by Iu. A. Mochanov and
S. A. Fedoseeva (Mochanov 1969). Its branches
in Chukotka were the Northern Chukotka and

121

137. Old Bering Sea Harpoon

Modem types of harpoons were
being used in Bering Strait 2,500
years ago. The weight of the ivory
harpoon head, foreshaft, and socket-
piece was counterbalanced by an
ivory "winged object" fixed to the
butt end of the harpoon. Winged ob¬
jects went out of style in Alaska
about a.d. 1000, but comparable
forms were retained in Greenland
into historic times.

Ust'-Belaia cultures. The latter, at about 1100
b.c., occasionally used bronze instruments for
the hunting of both caribou and seals. The
economy of this culture is illustrated in part on
the Pegtymel petroglyphs dating to the same
period (Dikov 1972). Ymyiakhtakh culture, lo¬
cated farther west, was primarily a caribou
hunting and fishing culture; however, several of
its variants, such as Burulgino in the lower
Indigirka River, have stone inventories including
burins, knives, and arrowheads whose closest
analogies are among the Old Bering Sea Eskimo
culture complex in Bering Strait. Late forms of
Ymyiakhtakh ceramic technology no doubt influ¬
enced Choris and Norton ceramics.

By the second millennium b.c. in northern
Kamchatka, cultural developments in the middle
period of the Neolithic included elements also
found among ancient Eskimo cultures of Bering
Strait. On the American side, early Old Bering
Sea and Okvik ornament designs such as circle-
dot, spurred line, and acute-angle line motifs
have not been found in earlier American cultures
as they have in the Siberian Burulgino site
previously described. This may result, however,
from the absence of bone preservation in Amer¬
ican sites dating to this period.

The origin of the Eskimo skin-covered kayak,
a type of boat known in various forms in many
places in the northern hemisphere, is of special
interest because of its importance in the Eskaleut
adaptation pattern. Undoubtedly, the neolithic
inhabitants of Siberia had boats, but no certain
evidence of whether these were of bark or skin
exists. La Martinier in the 16th century found
evidence of skin boats on the shores of the

138. Winged Objects
Old Bering Sea culture
MAE 6479-612, 6479-9-208
These winged objects date to the or¬
nate Old Bering Sea III period and
probably depict fearsome, wolflike
tunghak spirit controllers. Drilled
holes may have contained black plugs
and seal hair bristles; grooves are for
insertion of throwing board hooks.
Visual puns in the form of hidden
animals (upper left) are a characteris¬
tic feature of Eskimo art.

122

139. Ancient Hunting Magic
Old Bering Sea culture: (top to bot¬
tom, left) MAE 6479-269, 6588-72,
6588-139; (top to bottom, right) SI

Old Bering Sea I (Okvik)

Old Bering Sea II

Old Bering Sea III

=*>

Punuk

Contemporary Alaskan Eskimo

«<«■<-«« snug r
£«<««« T.,.T.>,T

Covarrubias 1954

378054; MAE 6561-126, 6479-17-
582, 6479-9-205

Old Bering Sea hunters decorated
their harpoons with incised designs
and spirit images in the belief that
their beauty, which honored the ani¬
mal spirits, drew game to the hunter.
Carvings of spirit helpers and deities
further strengthened the power of
these weapons. Feathers and wings
transformed harpoon heads into swift
birds of prey; socketpieces were
carved into representations of the
hunters' predator-helping spirits; and
winged objects were ornamented
with images of the powerful control¬
ling spirit, the tunghak.

Stylistic diversity and absence of
identical designs suggest Old Bering
Sea art was produced by individual
hunters, rather than by designated
craft specialists. Yupik Eskimo hunt¬
ers of Southwest Alaska continued
the traditions of Old Bering Sea hunt¬
ers into the 20th century.

140. Style Shift in Eskimo Art

Old Bering Sea culture: MAE 6561-
329, 6561-256; Punuk culture: SI
356126, 344677, 356128 (top to bot¬
tom)

Excavating stratifed house floors at
St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, Henry
Collins discovered stylistic keys to
the 2,500-year development of Es¬
kimo art. The sequence begins with
the flat, angular Old Bering Sea I
(Okvik) style dating 500 b.c. This
was followed by the increasingly or¬
nate, plastic, and curvilinear OBS II
and OBS III styles. After a.d. 800,

Old Bering Sea art was replaced by
simpler designs characteristic of Pu¬
nuk culture. In addition to changes in
ornamentation, wing elements under¬
went reduction in the Punuk period
until only the central post required
for throwing board hook insertion re¬
mained.

Collins noted the importance of
Asian influence in Eskimo art and
recognized that Eskimo culture had
reached a fully developed stage by
2,500 years ago (Collins 1937).

Barents Sea, and during our times Iu. B. Sim-
chenko discovered relics of their existence in
Taimyr. Archeologically, kayak models with fea¬
tures similar to umiaks and inland Chukchi kay¬
aks have been found in 2,000-year-old Siberian
Old Bering Sea culture sites (fig. 135). Since it
would be virtually impossible to live along the
shores of the Bering Sea without skin boats, we
must assume that they were a necessary element
in early arctic maritime adaptation for at least
the last 4,000 years.

Like the skin boat, the origin of harpoon
technology, which is the basis for hunting sea
mammals and for the entire North Bering Sea
adaptation, is complex, and many details of its
development remain unknown. Harpoon typol¬
ogy suggests two pathways of development
corresponding to the two dominant types of
harpoons — the barbed nontoggling form and the
toggling form (fig. 195). The former probably
originated from the old paleolithic fish harpoon
that predates man's arrival in Bering Strait by
thousands of years and was geographically wide¬
spread. The origin of the toggling harpoon,
however, is more recent and obscure. Primarily
a North Pacific and North American arctic im¬
plement, early toggling harpoons have been
found in Old Whaling and Wrangel Island Cher-
tov Ovrag sites at 1500 b.c. However, earlier
prototypes are known from Maritime Archaic
Indian sites in Newfoundland and Labrador as
early as 5500 B.c.. Could it be that this early
"Eskimo” implement was actually introduced to
the Western Arctic by central Arctic Pre-Dorset
peoples who we have reason to believe acquired
toggling harpoons from Northeastern Indians
4,000 years ago, 500 years before the appear¬
ance of toggling harpoons in the Chukchi Sea?

Following the introduction of toggling harpoon
technology into the North Pacific, harpoon dis¬
tribution takes on an interesting pattern. As A.
Leroi-Gourhan (1946) and later R. S. Vasilevski
(1969, 1971) noted, nontoggling, multibarbed
harpoons with lashed stone endblades were used
almost exclusively in Kamchatka, Japan, the
Kuriles, and the Aleutians; rarely are they found
in Bering Strait, where the pattern reverses,
toggling harpoons being more common than
nontoggling harpoons. In fact, it was noted that
the boundary between the two forms closely
followed the southern limit of the winter pack
ice, nontoggling forms occurring south of the
distribution of winter pack ice. From this came
the suggestion that toggling harpoons are ad¬
vantageous in regions where floating ice is
abundant because they do not protrude outside
of the wound and cannot be broken off when
the animal strikes the ice, either accidentally or

123

purposefully, whereas in iceless waters this
refinement is unnecessary.

A remarkable feature of the prehistory of the
northern Bering Sea is the proliferation of tog¬
gling harpoon types and artistic styles and motifs
that developed in this region during the first
millennium b.c. This complexity cannot be ex¬
plained simply by functional requirements re¬
lated to the hunting of different species or
seasonal (ice and non-ice) conditions. Rather it
seems to result primarily from social and reli¬
gious changes in which style, as measured by
artifact form and artistic elaboration, becomes
not only a marker of chronological periods and
broad sociocultural identity but also a designa¬
tion of social subgroups such as clans, families,
and even individuals. Whichever explanation one
chooses, nonfunctional diversity suggests the
growth of populations and creation of social and
ethnic diversity from a more undifferentiated
culture. By a.d. 0 we may suggest the presence
in this region of numerous small groups of people
with different ethnic backgrounds and cultural
traditions, all of which, however, were adapted
to marine mammal hunting and engaged in
intergroup contacts across Bering Strait. By this
time we find, besides different ethnic groups
settled in various regions around Bering Strait,
the convergence of an ethnos, a common Eskimo
type of lifeway, spreading throughout the region
in both Asia and Alaska.

Archeologically, we do not know all aspects
or stages of this process. But perhaps we know
something of its early development, depicted in
the Pegtymel petroglyphs, and of Asian influence
in Choris and Norton culture. We also know
something of its result: the formation of the
brilliant Old Bering Sea complex of cultures —
Okvik, Old Bering Sea, and Ipiutak — that were
the immediate progenitors of later Eskimo cul¬
ture history in the Bering Strait region. The
relationships between these three cultures have
not yet been fully clarified, partly because Okvik
and Old Bering Sea cultures are to date known
only in this area. In fact, there is reason to
believe that each of these cultures, whose ty¬
pological and radiocarbon dates of about 500
b.c. to a.d. 500 do not allow us to speak of these
cultures as dating from different periods, actually
may have originated as geographically distinct
entities, the Okvik in Southwest Alaska, Old
Bering Sea in Chukotka, and Ipiutak in north¬
western Alaska. As seen from the perspective
of excavations in the Bering Strait, where their
distributions seem to intersect, the differences
are not easy to perceive, and a single human
burial may contain objects decorated in any of
the three styles.

The economic base of the Old Bering Sea
complex (including Okvik but not Ipiutak) was
the hunting of walrus. Whale hunting was al¬
ready completely developed but was secondary
to walrus hunting in importance. Hunting of
other animals had a supplementary character.
Harpoons as a rule were thrown with the aid of
a throwing board. The rear end of the harpoon
shaft was fitted with an ivory "winged object"
that acted to counterbalance the heavy ivory
socketpiece and harpoon at the front end of the
shaft. All of these components were decorated
and had both aesthetic and magical qualities; in
addition the design may have helped the carver
reproduce his implements to a standardized
pattern and proportion.

One basic difference between Okvik and Old
Bering Sea cultures is seen in their harpoon

141. Containers and Float Gear
Old Bering Sea culture: (upper, 1-r)
MAE 6588-69, -12; (lower, 1-r), -233,
-63, -80/61

Wood was available to peoples of
Bering Strait only in the form of drift¬
wood. Wood was used for food trays,
bucket bottoms, wound plugs, float
plugs, and many other items, but is
rarely preserved in ancient sites.
Often baleen and ivory were more
plentiful than wood, and just as serv¬
iceable.

142. Women's Work
Old Bering Sea culture: MAE 6588-
39, -241; 6561-419, -516; 6588-41,
6508-562; NMNH-372080; MAE
6588-33, -36 (left to right)

Women's work was dominated by the
production of warm, tailored skin
clothing. Old Bering Sea and Punuk
women used beautifully crafted
zoomorphic stone-bladed ulus, needle-
cases, bootcreasers, and sinew twist¬
ers. The four-toed ivory foot, an ani¬
mal reference, functioned as a lice

124

143. Pottery

Old Bering Sea culture: (top to bot¬
tom) MAE 6588-74, 6561-1014a,b
Unlike other pottery traditions in the
Americas, which developed without
external stimulus, pottery spread into
Alaska from neolithic cultures of
Siberia 4,000 years ago. Used for
cooking pots and oil lamps among the
relatively sedentary coastal peoples,
pottery remained in use in western
Alaska until the 20th century. Eskimo
pottery was relatively crude and was
often undecorated. Ivory paddles with
stamp designs were used by Old Ber¬
ing Sea people to consolidate the wet
clay and impart surface decoration.

144. Shaman's Pottery Paddles
Old Bering Sea culture: MAE 6508-
547, 6587-564 (bottom)

These ivory pottery paddles show
that different stamp designs were
used in late Old Bering Sea times.
The lower paddle displays the Es¬
kimo penchant for contour-grip han¬
dles, skeletal art, and contorted sha-
manic faces — the latter not visible
here but present on the end of the
lower handle. Similar faces are found
on shaman's drums. The upper pad¬
dle illustrates a shaman with out¬
stretched human legs and bear paws
transformed into his polar bear spirit
helper, in shamanic flight. A bear
head is carved at one end, a beast's
mouth at the other.

head styles. Old Bering Sea harpoon heads tend
to have symmetrical heads with sideblade insets;
Okvik harpoon heads tend to be asymmetric and
have endblades, but the latter are found in Old
Bering Sea as well. Some of the Okvik-Oid Bering
Sea types cannot be distinguished from harpoon
heads found in Ipiutak sites. Walrus ivory arti¬
facts decorated with elegant engraved and sculp¬
tural art are common in both of these cultures.

There are, of course, more pronounced dif¬
ferences between Okvik— Old Bering Sea cultures
and Ipiutak. The latter did not use oil lamps or
knives and points of slate that are characteristic
of the former, probably because Ipiutak, like
Norton culture, had roots in earlier cultures
adapted to coastal life in western Alaska, in
which sea mammal hunting was not highly
specialized (seals primarily, less often walrus)
and which depended to a significant degree on
caribou. Whether Ipiutak ever hunted whales is
not clear. We must also note that even in Old
Bering Sea cultures chipped stone tools do occur,
although they are less common than slate points.

Differences in the use of slate and flint tools
by Ipiutak and Old Bering Sea cultures may
have a rather functional basis relating to their
economic conditions. Modem Eskimo people, for
example, prefer soft iron for points, knives, and
flensing tools rather than hard steel, which is
difficult and time-consuming to sharpen. A com¬
pletely analogous situation exists for the rela¬
tionship between slate and flint weapons; north¬
ern maritime cultures with sea mammal

specializations almost universally adopt slate
technology for piercing, flensing, and sea mam¬
mal skin processing activities. The preference
for ground slate technology at the expense of
chipped stone tools through time generally in
Alaska is seen also in Bering Strait, where flint
or chert tools common in Ipiutak and present in
Old Bering Sea are replaced by slate in Punuk
times, by ca. a.d. 1000. However, during this
time use of iron in Siberia was gaining ascend¬
ancy, and slate grinding may have been a
suitable, and in many ways a comparable, sub¬
stitute in areas where metal was scarce and
expensive.

Another difference between Old Bering Sea
and Ipiutak is seen in the ceramic traditions of
Old Bering Sea culture, absent in Ipiutak. Old
Bering Sea ceramics were generally of low
quality. The types present were usually round
bottom cups and bowls with decorations stamped
on their surfaces by ivory pottery paddles. Sev¬
eral of these stamp paddles were found at the
Ekven site with concentric circle and lined dec¬
oration (fig. 144). To some degree this decline
in ceramic technology has to be seen against
the elevated expression found in the ivory carv¬
ing arts.

The florescence of the Old Bering Sea complex
seems to have been assisted, though only to a
limited extent, by the acquisition of metal, par¬
ticularly of iron, tools. Both linguistic and arche¬
ological evidence suggest the Japanese Sea as
the source of Old Bering Sea metal. Remains of
iron tools have been found at both Ipiutak and
Old Bering Sea culture sites. One can therefore
suggest that the ornamental art of these cultures
developed under the oblique influence of ancient
Far Eastern civilization. Especially notable in this
regard are early Eskimo sculptures, which are
realistic and stylized representations depicting
fantastic masks (figs. 138, 147—149). The great
number of masks and zoomorphic images in the
Old Bering Sea complex seems also to have
been related, though through a process not yet
understood, to the art of Scytho-Siberian, Shang,

125

145. Shaman's Burial

Old Bering Sea culture

Burial 154 at Ekven, excavated by

S.A. Arutiunov and D.A. Sergeev

(1975), was the most elaborate burial

found at this important cemetery.

The burial contained the remains of a
woman lying on a wood floor in a
stone-lined grave, surrounded by
many ivory, wood, shell, stone, and
bone tools, including both men's and
women's implements. The large num¬
ber of finds and presence of drum
handles and masks (including dance
goggles shown above) suggest this
woman was a powerful shaman.

146. Burial Mask

Old Bering Sea culture: MAE 6588-
119

Quintessentially Eskimo in physical
appearance, this wood mask has ob¬
structed vision caused by insertion of
carved bone eyes. Blocked vision is a
feature of Siberian shaman costumes
(figs. 333, 334) and of North Pacific
deathmasks in general. The mask
was probably placed over the de¬
ceased's face at the time of her death
to prevent the shaman's spirit from
returning to animate the body, and
was removed to a location between
her knees at burial.

147. Antler Soul Catcher
Ipiutak culture: AMNH 60.1/453
Among the implements found in
Ipiutak graves were sucking tubes,
used by shamans to extract evil spir¬
its from sick people. The assistance
of wolflike helping spirits was re¬
quired. Compare with fig. 451.

126

148, Masked Spirits
Old Bering Sea culture: (left to right)
MAE 6561-722, -1000, 6588-118
(left to right)

Mask plaques and a set of dance gog¬
gles display a variety of masking tra¬
ditions and spirits (bird, tunghak, and
transformed man) known to Old Ber¬
ing Sea people.

149. Ipiutak Burial Mask
Ipiutak culture: AMMH 60.1-7713
This composite ivory mask was found
disassembled at the Ipiutak cemetery
at Point Hope, Alaska. Like the Ekven
mask, it was probably worn between
the time of death and burial. Another
composite mask found at Ipiutak was
lying disassembled between the
knees of the deceased. Stylistic paral¬
lels have been noted between these
masks and burial masks used by the
Eastern Chou Dynasty of China (Col¬
lins 1971).

and Eastern Chou peoples on the one hand (figs.
448, 450, 451) and to Northwest Coast Indians
on the other (fig. 449). Art, technology, funeral
practices, and shamanism somehow seem to be
deeply involved in these transfers.

One of the particular characteristics of Old
Bering Sea walrus tusk sculpture is its polyiconic
nature, the mixing in one space of two or more
images that must be seen from different vantage
points. Polyiconic art serves as a means for
expressing parallelism or connections of "primal
incarnation" between people and animals of the
land and the sea. Thus a killer whale appears
as a sea transformation of the wolf, a shaman
turns into a polar bear (figs. 46, 144), the walrus
may be transformed into the mountain sheep,
or a woman turns into a walrus. These plots

recorded in 2,000-year-old finds are present also
in modem Eskimo mythology and folklore and
show that the sea orientation of these cultures
has been expressed in their ideological struc¬
tures for thousands of years. Many of the same
stories are found among 19th-century Yupik and
Inupiat peoples. These traditions are especially
strong in the case of the Yupik-speaking Bering
Sea Eskimo, whose material and spiritual culture
appears derived with little modification from the
early Paleoeskimo cultures of Bering Strait.

Attempting to resolve questions of social
structure on the basis of archeological material
would be quite a thankless task, but there is a
reason to suggest that in Old Bering Sea society
there existed rather significant social and ma¬
terial differentiation, even perhaps including
paternal slavery. Artifacts found in graves sug¬
gest the economic status of poor, middle, and
rich individuals, a conclusion that is reflected
also in the construction techniques and coverings
of stone and whale bones found over the graves.
Incidents of the finding of particularly rich graves
accompanied by graves without artifacts may
be explained as the burials of slaves.

Here we should also recall our discussions of
stylistic complexity and the fact that the art of
Okvik, Old Bering Sea, and Ipiutak cultures
seems to reflect more than individual creative¬
ness. Not only are no two implements decorated
in the same style; diversity seems to be an end
in itself, expressing an individual artisan's iden¬
tity and, through his works, his respect for the
spirits upon whom he and his community de¬
pended. This concept, the creation of beautiful
works as a sign of respect to the spirits, was
deeply rooted in Bering Sea Eskimo life and
seems likely to have been a motivating factor in
ancient Eskimo production as well. This attitude
of individual artistic exuberance, apparently
practiced by individual carvers and not simply
by master artisans or specialists, contrasts strongly
with the replicative, mechanical art of the suc¬
ceeding Punuk period, a time when corporate
social logic and belief in the power of technology
itself seems to have gained sway over the
spiritual powers and identities of individual hunt¬
ers and seamstresses. Nowhere is this more
obvious than in the shift from individual hunting
of sea mammals in the Old Bering Sea cultures
to intensified, communal hunting of whales in
Punuk.

127

Recent Ancestors

Beginning in the 6th and 7th centuries a.d. in
Bering Strait a new type of economy took hold.
Especially in the Bering Sea area, Old Bering
Sea culture gradually developed into Punuk
culture, which spread on the Asian shore from
Uelen toward the south to Beringovsk, and also
onto St. Lawrence Island, but not, initially, to
Alaska, where Norton and Birnirk culture pre¬
vailed. As more material is found, the specific
characteristics of Punuk culture become clear:
massive simple harpoon heads, plate armor for
warriors, simplified ornamental forms, winged
objects being replaced by three-pronged forms,
and other changes that had begun in later stages
of Old Bering Sea culture but that were not
widespread. The major distinction of the Punuk
as compared with earlier cultures was its in¬
creased whale hunting specialization. Houses
grew larger, as did villages and numbers of sites,
all of which reflect population growth. The use
of whale bones for house and grave construction
increased, and social organization seems to have
become more complex. It is also possible to
speak about the birth of intertribal cooperation
at such sites as "Whale Alley'' on Ittygran Island,
where ceremonial constructions using skulls and
jawbones of more than 100 bowhead whales
must have required the cooperative efforts of
several villages. By this time also, the growing
presence of plate armor indicates that warfare
had become as important an element of inter¬
group social relations as trade and stylistic
exchange. Punuk culture continues, with varia¬
tion, on the Asian side of the strait until a.d.
1500.

Meanwhile, Birnirk culture developed on the
shores of the Chukchi Sea. The distribution of
this culture extended further south than East
Cape on the Asian shore and in the northeast
reached Point Barrow. Birnirk culture seems to
have developed with influence from Okvik and
Ipiutak but with few ties to Old Bering Sea.
Birnirk, dating to the 6th through 10th centuries
a.d., had considerable Punuk influence in its
later stages.

Beginning in the 10th century, Birnirk culture
was slowly transformed into Thule culture by
the addition of Punuk elements, including whale
hunting, which expanded from Bering Strait into
North Alaska and the Canadian Arctic at a time
when relative climatic warmth facilitated the
penetration of large whales into new feeding
grounds in the Arctic Ocean. By a.d. 1300 Thule

culture was established throughout the North
American Arctic from Bering Strait to Greenland.
However, with the cooler climates following a.d.
1300, whaling was abandoned throughout much
of this region except in Alaska, and a period of
readaptation to a life more like the pre-Thule

period commenced. Art and material culture
styles simplified, and social organization atom¬
ized. Canadian Eskimo culture remained in this
form until its first contacts with Europeans re¬
kindled social and economic development.

Thus as distinct from the stable, slow pace of
cultural development that seems to have oc¬
curred in Kamchatka and in the Aleutians, the
Bering Sea region, even at high latitudes, dem¬
onstrates a different character. Here, adaptation
to conditions that were harsh and unstable but
at times provided a combination of favorable
conditions periodically led to rapid and clear
achievements. However, climatic deterioration
often resulted in these refinements' being short¬
lived. Faced with more harsh realities, sea mam¬

150. Ivory Ornaments

Old Bering Sea culture: MAE 6588-

38, -40.

These ivory openwork carvings from
Burial 154, the shaman's grave, re¬
semble metal chains and bangles
used as power objects on 19th-cen¬
tury Siberian shaman costumes. Ivory
copies of exotic west Siberian metal
ornaments probably were used for
similar purposes by Old Bering Sea
shamans on garments and ritual
equipment (fig. 212). Nineteenth-
century Alaskan Eskimos believed the
sounds of chains and rattles pleased
sea mammal spirits and helped draw
them to the hunter.

mal hunting cultures then returned to a simpler
level.

The source of the economic-cultural type of
the ancestors of the Chukchi and the Koryak
originated when peoples whose cultures were
based on the early form of caribou hunting and
fishing acquired domestic reindeer, which oc¬
curred first about the 8th or 10th century (a.d.).
True large-scale reindeer herding culture de¬
veloped here, as everywhere in northern Eura¬
sia, only during the 18th century.

The change from strictly land hunting to a
coastal adaptation that included sea mammal
hunting among the ancient ancestors of the
Chukchi began as early as the middle of the
second millennium b.c. However, throughout
their development the Maritime Chukchi always
remained less specialized sea hunters than the
Eskimo, except at the eastern tip of Chukotka.

As far as the Koryak ethnogenesis is con¬
cerned, as their ancient development moved
further from the ancestors they held in common
with the Chukchi, probably in the second mil¬
lennium b.c., and spread south to the Okhotsk
shore in northern Kamchatka, they may have
entered into contact with the Eskaleut substrata
that occupied these lands previously. After this,
ancient Koryak culture of various stages, from
the second millennium b.c. to the 15th through
17th centuries a.d. represents a relatively
straightforward sequential development. At the

151. Wrist Guards

Punuk culture: NMNH 339833,

T-23244

The appearance of Punuk culture
after a.d. 800 brought many changes
to the smaliscale Paleoeskimo socie¬
ties of Bering Strait. Economic devel¬
opment centered on the hunting of
large whales resulted in population
growth and increased mobility. Im¬
plements of war including armor
plate, wrist guards, and bow-and-
arrow parts proliferated, and modem
trading and raiding patterns became
established.

128

152. Tattooed Maskette

Old Bering Sea/Punuk culture: MAE

6479-522

Naturalistic human faces are rare in
Old Bering Sea art, which usually
portrays humans as transformed ani¬
mals. Although found in an Old Ber¬
ing Sea grave, this maskette has de¬
signs common in Punuk and later
phases of Eskimo art: rosette. Rav¬
en's foot, and spurred line — the latter
one appearing later as an identifying
mark on hunter's harpoons and ar¬
rows. Body tattoos have been used
for at least the past 2,500 years in
Eskimo prehistory.

153. PegtymeT Rock Art
Chukotka: Late Neolithic-Early
Iron Age, ca. a.d. 0
Rock art from the Pegtymel' River
near the Arctic coast of Chukotka
provides valuable information not
available from other archeological
sites (Dikov 1972). The most unusual
images are "mushroom people,"
thought to be spirits of fly agaric, the
hallucinogenic mushroom used
widely by peoples of Siberia in his¬
toric times. Scenes of spearing wild
reindeer from kayaks suggest that
domestic reindeer herding had not
yet been introduced. Images of hunt¬
ing large whales from umiaks with
harpoon equipment may indicate the
former presence of Eskimos on the
western Chukotkan coast and sug¬
gests that Chukchi did not begin
their expansion into this area until
the middle of the first millenium a.d.

same time, as R. S. Vasilevski notes, Koryak
culture development is quite eclectic, with traces
of the interior continental culture of the hunters
of wild caribou, elements from the south bank
of the Lower Amur, and, in terms of its harpoon
complex and maritime adaptation, with ancient
Eskaleut influences.

On the American side, Eskimo and Aleut
prehistory appears to call for relatively stable,
progressive development for the past 6,000
years in which distinct regional traditions can
be traced forward in South Alaska-Kodiak Island,
the Aleutians, and western Alaska. However,
major discontinuities occur in each sequence,
calling into question ideas of simple population
and cultural continuity. For Bering Sea cultures
evidence seems to point toward conservatism
among the cultures of the Bering Sea coast and
interior and a lack of obvious penetration of this
coast by Indian groups. But overall, the cultures
of western Alaska seem to have responded most
dynamically to change in the Bering Strait re¬
gion, where the potential for intensified resource
exploitation was greatest and where the flux of
communication with Asian cultures was greatest
and novelties more numerous.

Over tens of thousands of years cultural de¬
velopment has taken place along similar paths
both in the American and the Asian parts of the
Northern Pacific. Upper Paleolithic hunting cul¬
tures evolved into taiga and tundra hunters to
which Even culture contributed saddle and sled
transportation and domesticated reindeer. The
coastal adaptation of the Koryaks in many ways
is reminiscent of the Aleuts, while the Itelmen,
and even more the Nivkhi and Nanai tribes of
the Lower Amur, created a fishing culture similar
to that of the Northwest Coast Indians. But the
homogeneity and common cultural base of these
cultures, so widespread in the late Pleistocene
and at the beginning of the Holocene, began to
weaken by approximately 2000 b.c.. Thus, bronze
blades, characteristic of the Ust'-Belaia culture,
did not reach America, nor did several new
forms of stone implements, reindeer herding,
and many other Asian elements. On the other
hand, some Asian elements did appear, such as
ceramics, iron, art styles, and elements of mor¬

tuary ceremonialism and shamanism. It would
appear therefore that Bering Strait was never a
hindrance to the passage of materials and ideas
among local populations living along both its
shores. In fact, Bering Strait seems to have
operated somewhat as a check-valve, allowing
Asian elements to penetrate American territory
to a greater extent than American elements did
Asia. No doubt a major reason for this directional
flow relates to emanations from higher centers
of cultural development in Eurasia and to the
relative lack of such centers in North America.

The effects of these west to east influences
certainly had an impact on the Old Bering Sea
culture group and probably also in the formation
of Punuk culture and its whaling economy. Thus
it seems that over the past 4,000 years at least,
Asian influences via Bering Strait may have
been most important in North American arctic
prehistory, stimulating numerous cultural changes
if not population influxes in Arctic Small Tool,
Dorset, and Thule periods, while being of less
consequence in the Bering Sea and Pacific cul¬
ture history where American populations were
larger, more diverse, and better fed. These areas
seem to have resisted northern influence during
most periods, and the presence of slat and rod
armor, oil lamp types, house types, and other
cultural traits speak more strongly for Aleutian
rather than Bering Sea links with Asia.

Seen in this light, what is remarkable is that
the flow of Asian influence into the Bering Strait
region during the past several thousand years
seems not to have influenced other cultures of
the Americas, perhaps because the Eskimo cul¬
tures that lived there were so independent and
individual, and so different from the land-based
cultures neighboring it, that even though they
maintained contacts with the inland tundra-taiga
populations, they did not serve as a conduit for
culture exchange but rather constituted a rela¬
tively impenetrable isolating layer. This fact
determined the individual differences in the later
direction of the ethnic fate of the populations of
the American and Asian subarctic in spite of the
almost completely parallel nature of their eco¬
logical zones.

129

Prehistory of Alaska's Pacific Coast

The southern coast of Alaska, extending from
the Aleutian Island chain to the Coast Range of
British Columbia, was home to a group of diverse,
complex, and colorful maritime cultures — the
Aleut, Koniag, Chugach, Eyak, and Tlingit. Though
each was unique in its own right, these cultures
were strongly linked to one another by shared
ideas and ways of life. This may be seen in
numerous aspects of technology, economy and
social organization, art, mythology, and cere¬
monial practices. These similarities imply a high
degree of past contact and crosscultural borrow¬
ing, a theory whose plausibility is enhanced by
the seagoing mobility of South Alaskan groups.
This mobility supported the existence of trade
networks that linked the whole length of the
coast into an extended zone of commerce and
interaction. Intersocietal warfare and raiding was
also endemic, resulting in the movement of
objects and people (slaves and war captives)
between groups.

Other similarities may have been the result
of parallel development rather than the diffusion
of cultural elements between groups. Tlingit
culture, for example, is noted for the importance
of wealth and status in governing relationships
between individuals and clans, and for the sys¬
tem of feasts and counterfeasts that shifted food
and wealth between kin groups. It is less well
known that similar (if less elaborated) systems
of social ranking, which divided society into
elites, commoners, and slaves, prevailed among
all the cultures of Alaska's southern coast (Town¬

send 1980). This was in sharp contrast to the
simpler, more egalitarian social systems of more
northerly Alaskan and Siberian cultures. This
social complexity, rare among the nonagricul-
tural peoples of the world, has been linked by
anthropological theorists to the exceptionally
rich fish and sea mammal resources available
throughout the region, which in turn fostered
human population growth, sedentary settlement
in large permanent villages, and the emergence
of political systems that functioned to control
and redistribute food surpluses among different
segments of the population (Ames 1981; Price
and Brown 1985).

The ethnographic situation thus challenges us
to examine the prehistory of the region and to
trace the processes by which both shared adap¬
tations and cultural diversity arose. Long arche¬
ological sequences at several key sites are avail¬
able, which provide parallel indexes to prehistoric
change in the Aleutians, Kodiak Island, and the
northern Northwest Coast, especially for the
period after 3000 b.c. The primary sites consid¬
ered in this essay are Chaluka, on Umnak Island
in the eastern Aleutians (Turner, Aigner, and
Richard 1974); the Karluk 1 and 31 sites on
western Kodiak Island (Jordan and Knecht 1986);
and a series of sites at Prince Rupert Harbour,
north of the Skeena River in British Columbia
(MacDonald 1983). The location and dates of
these and other sites mentioned in the text are
shown in figure 128.

154. Seated Figure Bowl

Alouette River, b.c.; undated. CMC
XII-B-1798

The earliest seated figure bowls are
from the lower Fraser River region
between 350 b.c. and a.d. 200 (Mar-
pole Phase), but their use may have
continued into the historical period
among the Shuswap (Borden 1983;
Duff 1975). At the end of a girl's
puberty ceremony she was sprinkled
by a shaman with water and herbs
from the bowl, with prayers for the
birth of many childem. The iconogra¬
phy is complex — a rattlesnake head
lies flat on the figure's breast, while
down its back one snake consumes
another. Two hawklike faces peer for¬
ward and backward from the base of
the bowl.

130

The Earliest Sites: The Paleoarctic Tradition

155. Bone Ornament
Hot Springs site, Alaska
1st millennium a.d. NMNH 16089
William Dali collected this ornament
from the upper layer of the extensive
Hot Springs village site at Port Moller
on the Alaska Peninsula (Dali
1877:87). It is completely hollowed
out in back and has small lashing
holes, as if it had once been sewn on
to a hat or clothing, or fitted to the
end of some small cylindrical object.
The delicately carved face merges
with either the arched jaws of a
whale or a bird beak, or both — the
shape may be intentionally ambigu¬
ous.

During the period from 9000 to 5500 B.c., sites
of the Siberian-American Paleoarctic tradition,
which share a stone tool technology centered
on the production of blades for composite hunt¬
ing weapons, were occupied on the margins of
Beringia from Hokkaido, Japan, through North¬
eastern Siberia, and across Alaska to British
Columbia (fig. 121). Although inland site loca¬
tions and occasionally preserved animal bones
indicate the dependence of these early northern
people on post-Pleistocene interior fish and game
(caribou, bison, elk, mountain sheep, horse),
some Paleoarctic coastal sites have been discov¬
ered along the seaward flanks of southern Alas¬
kan mountain ranges. The locations of these
coastal sites strongly suggest a maritime ori¬
entation, despite the lack of faunal remains.
They include Anangula (6000 b.c.) in the eastern
Aleutians (Laughlin and Reeder 1966; Laughlin
1980), the Koggiung site (6000 b.c.) on the
Alaska Peninsula (Dumond 1981), the Ground
Hog Bay (Component II, 6800 b.c.) and Hidden
Falls (7500 b.c.) sites on the Alexander Archi¬
pelago of southeastern Alaska (Ackerman et al.
1979), and the Namu site (Component I, 7100
b.c.) on the mainland coast north of Vancouver
Island (Carlson 1979). The earliest of these sites
were occupied not long after melting of the
coastal glaciers first opened the coast to habi-

Salmon, Seals, and Shell Middens:

The Emergence of Large Coastal Settlements

There is a startling difference in visibility be¬
tween the thin traces of early coastal occupation
discussed so far and the massive prehistoric
village sites that dot the southern coast of Alaska,
the Aleutians, and British Columbia. The village
sites are thick mounds of shell, bone, stone, and
cultural debris, built up over centuries of con¬
tinuous occupation. The surfaces of these mounds
are often treacherous with the deep pits of
collapsed houses, hidden by the luxuriant sum¬
mer vegetation that thrives in the rainy climate
and on the enriched midden soil. On the North¬
west Coast, the oldest and lowest shell levels
(such as Namu III and the Prince Rupert Harbour
sites) have been radiocarbon dated to about
3000 b.c., give or take a few hundred years.
This date marks the beginning of the middle
period of Northwest Coast prehistory. Farther
north and west along the Pacific coast this
development occurs slightly later and less dra¬
matically, with transitional examples like Sandy
Beach Bay on Umnak Island (2500 b.c.) and
Ocean Bay sites in the Kodiak region (4000—
2000 b.c.) leading to the establishment of wide-

tation. Johnstone Strait at the north end of
Vancouver Island appears to represent the far¬
thest southward penetration of Paleoarctic mi¬
croblade-using people into North America, al¬
though microblades came into use along the
southern Northwest Coast and interior Plateau
region in later times.

William S. Laughlin (1967) proposed that the
Paleoarctic people were ancestral to both Eski¬
mos and Aleuts and developed a maritime way
of life while living along the southern margin of
the now submerged Bering Land Bridge. There
is some difficulty with this idea, since current
data indicate that the land bridge was completely
submerged by about 12,000 b.c., more than
2,000 years earlier than any firmly dated sites
on the coast or in the interior of Alaska. The
flooding of the land bridge would not have been
an effective barrier to entrance into the New
World, however, since Bering Strait is crossable
on the ice in winter and by boat in summer. It
seems more likely that migration into Alaska
from Siberia took place no earlier than about
10,000 b.c., and that maritime settlement first
occurred along the Pacific and Bering Sea coasts
of Alaska. The earliest shoreline sites would now
be flooded by the post— Ice Age rise in sea level,
so these very early developments are likely to
remain obscure.

spread and large-scale coastal villages by about
2000 b.c. This date marks the beginning of the
Kachemak phase in the Kodiak-Cook Inlet region
and the settlement of the Chaluka site on Umnak
Island in the eastern Aleutians.

Found in these coastal middens is a whole
new variety of tools and weapons needed for
the hunting and fishing life of the coast, and the
first examples of art and ceremonial objects.
Microblades and chipped stone points have been
replaced with an emphasis on ground slate
implements, and barbed harpoon points for seal¬
ing and fishhooks are common. Knut R. Fladmark
(1975) has suggested that coastal village sites
became common after 3000 b.c. because it was
at this time that climatic and geomorphological
factors promoted the establishment of massive
and dependable runs of salmon in the rivers.
Summer salmon fishing produced large food
surpluses that supported the permanent occu¬
pation of the large coastal villages, as well as
the complex ceremonial life that was carried out
there during the late fall and winter months.

131

Social Complexity and Artistic Development in
the Kodiak Region

In the intensified maritime focus that emerged
after 3000 b.c. we find the beginnings of a
remarkable transformation of Pacific hunting,
fishing, and gathering societies that led over the
course of several hundred generations to the
ethnographic complexity and diversity encoun¬
tered by the first European explorers. These
developments included population growth ac¬
companied by increasing numbers of villages,
changes in house forms, expanded trade net¬
works, increased warfare, elaboration of cere¬
monialism, and the development of distinctive
regional styles of art and personal adornment.
Interwoven with these archeologically observa¬
ble trends was the emergence of ranked social
systems with an emphasis on prestige and wealth.

Intensive surveys and excavations in the Ko¬
diak region have greatly expanded understand¬
ing of these complex developments, especially
work over the past five years at the Karluk 1
site on Kodiak. The Kodiak sequence offers
perhaps the best exemplar of general develop¬
ments taking place along the Pacific coast, and
its description will be followed by comparisons
with the data from the Aleutians (the Chaluka
site) and the northern Northwest Coast (Prince
Rupert Harbour sites).

Ocean Bay Tradition

The Ocean Bay I culture (4000—2500 b.c.) rep¬
resents an early transitional example of maritime
adaptation in the region, predating the general
emergence of large sedentary coastal popula¬
tions by a thousand years or more. This arche¬
ological culture is known from more than a dozen
sites on Kodiak Island and the Alaska Peninsula,
where a local variant is known as the Takli Alder
phase (D. W. Clark 1979; G. H. Clark 1977).
Preserved food bone from one of the Takli Alder
sites indicates that sea otter, seal, sea lion, and
porpoise were all being hunted. Barbed bone
harpoon heads and stone lamps for burning sea
mammal oil also occur in the oldest Ocean Bay
levels. A two-phase settlement pattern appears
to have already been in place, with small coastal
settlements (fall to spring) and summer fishing
camps along the banks of salmon rivers.

Judging from the size and number of known
sites, and the thinness of occupation levels, the
Ocean Bay I population was small, mobile, and
thinly scattered. This impression remains, even
accounting for the difficulty of locating Ocean
Bay sites, since they are more likely to be
completely overgrown or buried beneath later
cultural deposits. Domestic groups were prob¬

ably simple nuclear families, judging from the
small size and simple rectangular or oval form
of the dwellings, which had sunken floors and
sod walls. Because organic preservation is rare
in sites of this age, we have no indications of
what Ocean Bay art or ceremonial practices
might have been like.

Ocean Bay I stone tool technology included
both microblade manufacture (providing a link
to the antecedent Paleoarctic tradition) and the
chipping of knives and weapon points from chert.
Stone tools made from sawn and ground slate,
including long narrow lance blades, were used
from the beginning of early Ocean Bay I but
became increasingly more common through time
and gradually replaced the chipped stone tool
kit. This shift to ground slate technology marks
the beginning of Ocean Bay II (2500—2000 b.c.)
and was paralleled in coastal mound phases all
along the Pacific coast. Interestingly, no shift to
slate occurs in archeological sequences to the
north of the Pacific Eskimo area at this time, nor
did Bering Sea developments such as the ap¬
pearance of the .Arctic Small Tool tradition (2500-
1000 b.c.) have any visible impact south of the
Alaska Peninsula. These data indicate that at
this early stage Pacific cultures were developing
with a large degree of independence from cul¬
tures around the Bering Sea.

Kachemak Tradition

The size and number of sites that date to the
succeeding Kachemak tradition (2000 b.c.— a.d.
1 100) suggest that both population size and the
intensity of resource exploitation greatly in¬
creased during this period. Hundreds of house
groups and village sites in coastal locations on
Kodiak, the Alaska Peninsula, and Cook Inlet are
known, situated to maximize proximity to such
resources as sea bird rookeries, sea mammal
concentrations, salmon streams, and shellfish
beds (de Laguna 1975; Heizer 1956; D. W. Clark
1970). Discarded food bone from these sites
shows that scores of different species of mam¬
mals (including whales), birds, fish, and shellfish
were being consumed. Inland sites occur along
salmon rivers; the collapsed remains of Kache¬
mak houses occur in great numbers along the
25-mile length of the Karluk River on Kodiak
Island, where summer salmon runs of 10 million
fish or more were probably once common. Houses
are square or rectangular and slightly larger
than in Ocean Bay times (averaging about 250
square feet inside), with hearths, storage pits,
and small appended storage alcoves. Middens
(layered deposits of occupational debris) are
often 3 feet thick or more, and the good pres¬
ervation of bone and shell that is usually present

156. Ornamented Stone Lamp
Uyak site, Kodiak Island, Alaska
Kachemak, ca. 500 b.c.-a.d. 500
NMNH 375349

Massive pecked stone lamps provided
with wicks were used to burn sea
mammal oil for light and heat inside
the house. The bear head in this
lamp would have been eerily illumi¬
nated by the flame, appearing to float
above its pool of oil.

132

157. Kachemak Carvings
Uyak site, Kodiak Island, Alaska
Kachemak, ca. 500 b.c.-a.d. 500
NMNH 363740, 365592
Bone and ivory carving reached a
high state of refinement during the
Kachemak phase. The miniature
mask (left) is crowned with a head¬
dress and has eye holes like a real
mask, suggesting that it may have
ceremonially masked a figurine. The
imagery on the plaque (right) points
to its use in whaling ceremonies. The
human face is flanked by whales;
bird heads adorn the ends of the
plaque; and feathers were probably
once inserted into the bordering line
of small holes. From the back of the
plaque projects a lug which served as
a hand or mouth grip.

provides a much fuller picture of Kachemak life
to the archeologist than is possible for Ocean
Bay.

By the late, or developed, Kachemak phases,
dating to the first millennium a.d., distinctive
technological, artistic, and ceremonial charac¬
teristics become evident. The sea mammal hunt¬
ing and fishing technology is fully developed,
including several varieties of barbed bone dart
points, toggling harpoon heads, large numbers
of net and line weights for fishing, and compound
fishhooks. Long, heavy barbed dart heads fitted
with barbed slate blades were probably used
for poison whaling, as were identical weapons
by the historic-period Aleuts. The barbed end-
blades known as the Three Saints type probably
fit into these dart heads and frequently have
inscribed designs that would have functioned as
owner's marks, identifying the hunter who had
first struck the whale. Ground slate tools pre¬
dominate over chipped stone and include nu¬
merous knives and ulus. All of these tools show
careful attention to craftsmanship. Woodworking
implements such as hafted planing adzes and
wedges remind us of the wooden objects (bowls,
masks, carvings, etc.) that are absent or poorly
preserved. Oval stone lamps for burning sea
mammal oil are often large and ornamented with
grooves, bars, female breasts, human and animal
forms (fig. 156).

Objects of personal adornment become pro¬
gressively more varied and common throughout
the Kachemak period. Labrets of varied shapes
and materials (bone, ivory, jet, amber, marble)
are found, along with occasional stone and shell

beads, pendants, earrings, nose rings, combs,
and polished stone mirrors. The raw materials
used for ornaments and amulets are often from
distant sources, implying an expansion of trade
contacts throughout the region.

Other objects and practices reveal aspects of
ceremonial life, probably concentrated during a
winter season of feasts and hunting rituals as in
later times. Of particular interest in this regard
is an ivory plaque (fig. 157) from the Uyak site
on Kodiak island, which depicts a human face
flanked by a pair of whales. Zoomorphic bone
carvings, figurines, and miniature human masks
in bone appear, many of which probably served
as amulets. Treatment of the dead, known from
the abundant human remains found in village
sites, is varied and complex. Multiple types of
burials are known, including cremation. Skulls
interpreted as trophy heads occur, with features
modeled in clay and inset with artificial bone
eyes. This use of artificial eye insets parallels
practices seen in Old Bering Sea and Ipiutak
burial traditions at this time. Dismemberment,
cutting and drilling of human bones, and possible
cannibalism are indicated by the condition of
the human remains and may relate to the treat¬
ment of war captives.

Koniag Tradition

The Koniag tradition of Kodiak Island is well
documented by excavations in the 1960s (D. W.
Clark 1974) and by recently excavated sites at
the mouth of the Karluk River, including the
Karluk 1 "wet site," where constant ground-
water saturation has resulted in excellent pres¬
ervation of wooden and grass objects, as well
as bone, shell, and stone material (Jordan and
Knecht 1986). Excavations there have dissected
nine levels of superimposed Koniag houses that
extend from the contact period (mid- 1 700s) back
to the beginning of the Early Koniag phase (a.d.
1200), and have produced over 20,000 examples
of Koniag hunting and fighting equipment (bows,
throwing boards, darts, arrows, harpoons, shields,
and slat armor), household items (bowls, lamps,
grass and split root baskets, knives), boat parts,
ceremonial and religious artifacts (masks, figu¬
rines, amulets), ornaments, toys, gambling
equipment, and numerous other object classes.
Strata dating from 3000 b.c. (Ocean Bay I) to
ca. a.d. 1000 (Late Kachemak— Koniag) were
excavated at the Karluk 31 site on the opposite
bank of the river, providing an opportunity to
trace the cultural changes that took place during
the Kachemak-Koniag transition.

Richard H. Jordan and Richard A. Knecht
discount previous theories, which held that this
transition at the beginning of the second millen-

158. Prehistoric Koniag Villages on
Northwestern Kodiak Island, Alaska

159. A Prehistoric Koniag Settlement
on the Karluk River, Kodiak Island

160. Koniag Masks and Figurines

Karluk 1 site, Kodiak I., Alaska
Koniag, a.d. 1500-1750: Koniag, Inc.
UA85. 193. 3455, UA85. 193.3695,
UA85. 193.3733, UA85. 193.4063,
UA84. 193. 1044

Koniag figurines may have been used
for play or in shamanic rituals; some
have cut or burn marks, which sug¬
gest the latter function. The two figu¬
rines on the right wear labrets.

The raised slit eyes and flaring
nostrils of the maskette (left) are
unique, but its pointed head and
beaklike mouth are common Koniag
mask features. The full-sized mask
(right) was found lying face down in¬
side a storage box in a collapsed late
Koniag house; it is the short-eared
owl, frequently depicted in Yupik Es¬
kimo art (fig. 359).

nium a.d. represented an abrupt discontinuity
in the archeological record, caused by either the
immigration of Asians of a new physical type
and culture or by the rapidly spreading influence
of the Neoeskimo culture, centered at Bering
Strait. North Pacific cultures were far to the
south and on the periphery of these events, and
continued to develop largely according to their
own internal dynamics of change. Between a.d.
900 and 1 200, the Karluk sequence does show
gradual changes in artifact forms, art styles, and
house types that mark the end of Kachemak and
the beginning of Koniag culture, but the sudden
and broad changes in material culture that would
mark an abrupt Neoeskimo influx are absent.

The size and the number of known sites
continue to expand during the Koniag period,
reflecting population growth that eventually re¬
sulted in an estimated 10,000 or more inhabit¬
ants of Kodiak Island at the time of Russian
contact. Although there are more Koniag sites,
the settlement pattern duplicates that estab¬
lished during Kachemak times, so that stratified
levels representing both cultures are often pres¬
ent at the same sites. Figure 158, showing the

numerous Koniag sites around Uyak Bay and
along the Karluk River on Kodiak Island, suggests
to the imagination the busy animation of these
once populous shores — the smoke and activity
of the settlements and the endless coming and
going of kayaks and umiaks on the business of
hunting, travel, trade, and sometimes war. In
coastal locations such as Uyak Bay, large per¬
manent winter villages of up to 20 multifamily
houses were interspersed with outlying small
settlements and hunting camps that would have
been used in spring through fall. The sea mam¬
mal, bird, and shellfish resources procurable
from coastal settlements were complemented
by the tremendous summer concentrations of
spawning salmon in rivers like the Karluk. Mas¬
sive riverbank settlements (fig. 159) most likely
represent fishing camps that were reoccupied
each year by people drawn from a wide region.

This economic system presents the political
problem of gaining access to needed resources
in different ecological zones (e.g. coastal versus
riverine) in territories settled and controlled by
different segments of the population. The abun¬
dant food supply permitted Pacific coast popu-

134

lations to grow to high levels, a trend that we
have traced through several thousand years of
Kodiak Island prehistory. We may suppose that
with larger populations, unrestricted seasonal
movement between prime hunting and fishing
locations would have become increasingly dif¬
ficult. More complex social and political arrange¬
ments would have emerged to regulate both
direct access to resources and indirect access
through trade and redistributive feasts and cer¬
emonies. Local groups controlling important re¬
sources, particularly salmon fishing sites, would
have been at an advantage in such a system
and able to increase their own power and pres¬
tige. Hostile access, carried out through warfare
and controlled by military alliances, would have
also developed. The emergence of political and
military leaders and of ranked social systems
was the apparent outcome of this process in
North Pacific societies.

Several trends that may be indications of
increasing social complexity first became evi¬
dent in the Kachemak tradition and continued
and intensified during Koniag times. The great
increase in house size is one of those trends. In
the 15th century a.d., multiple siderooms began
to be added to Koniag houses, and floor areas
expanded to 850 square feet or more. Russian
observations tell us that extended family groups
of 18 to 20 people inhabited the typical Koniag
house during the early contact period. The shift
in house forms in the early Koniag phase implies

that large cooperative kin groups, upon which
the ethnographically known ranking system was
based, were emerging about this time.

It is also known from early historical accounts
of the Koniags that labrets, along with nose pins,
amber and glass beads, dentalium shells, and
other ornaments, were status indicators. Labrets
become very common inside the late prehistoric
houses at Karluk, including the large wooden
examples shown in figure 161. Of the three
wooden figurines illustrated in figure 160, one
wears a hat-shaped labret through the lower lip
and another wears large dual cheek labrets.
Smaller labrets in unusual shapes and materials
(fig. 161) may have had special social meanings
or have been nonlocal styles worn by traded or
captured slaves.

A striking increase in the frequency and va¬
riety of ceremonial objects also occurs in the
late prehistoric levels at the Karluk 1 site, which
seems to indicate a new intensity and variety in
ritual observances. Between about a.d. 1350
and 1500 at Karluk and other Koniag sites, large
numbers of polished slate pebbles were scratched
with the stylized face and clothing of a figure
variously adorned with beads, earrings, tattoos,
and labrets (fig. 162). The clothing is often
detailed in ways that suggest the feathers, seams,
and tassels seen on ethnographic examples of
Koniag parkas (fig. 268). The significance of this
short-lived phenomenon is unknown, but con¬
centrations of these incised pebbles on Koniag

162. Pebble People
Karluk 1 site, ca. a.d. 1350-1500
Stylized sketches on slate pebbles,
showing elaborately ornamented and
possibly masked figures in birdskin
coats, are found at early Koniag sites
on Kodiak Island. They seem to have
been made and discarded in large
numbers inside houses, talismans in
an unknown ritual procedure.

161. Koniag Labrets

Karluk 1 site, Kodiak I., Alaska

Koniag, a.d. 1500-1750:

Koniag, Inc.: Left column:

UA. 85. 193.4372, uncataloged. Center
column: UA84, 193.893,

UA85. 193.4188, UA84.193.2475,
uncataloged. Right column:

UA84. 193.889, UA85. 193.6459
Labrets displayed social information
about the wearer, probably including
sex, status, and origin. Most labrets
found at Karluk are made of wood,
like the three largest shown here, but
occasional examples in unusual
shapes and raw materials occur, like
the smaller pieces to the left.

135

house floors at Karluk give the impression that
they were rapidly made and discarded as part
of a ritual.

After a.d. 1500 a variety of masks and mas-
kettes appear that are identical to forms used
by the historic Koniag and Chugach and stylist¬
ically related to Bering Sea Eskimo masks. The
pointed heads and beaklike mouths of the ar¬
cheological maskettes in figure 163 may be
compared with the 19th-century masks illus¬
trated in figures 368 and 441. Mask hoops and
bangles seen on the ethnographic examples
become common in Karluk 1 house floor deposits
after a.d. 1500, and board masks similar to
figure 50 have also been recovered. Hoops
surrounding Bering Sea dance masks had mul¬
tiple symbolic references to transformations be¬
tween worlds, and similar ideas were probably
shared by Koniag mask makers. The pointed
heads of the masks may identify them as images
of kalags, evil spirits of the woods and caves
who were visible only to shamans (Birket-Smith

1953:124). A fascinating cross-Pacific connec¬
tion is implied here, to the malevolent Siberian
spirits, also with pointed heads, of the Koryak
(kalas) and Chukchi (kele s). The beaked mouths
are part of a general emphasis on bird imagery
in Pacific Eskimo art that apparently developed
at this time, including the idea of spiritual trans¬
formations between humans and birds. Puffins
are carved on Late Koniag bag handles, and a
full-sized owl mask from the Karluk site is shown
in figure 160. Complex transformation imagery
(visual punning) is also seen in a masklike carving
from Karluk (p. 105).

Figurines become common in the Late Koniag
levels at Karluk (fig. 160), including a remarkable
example that is probably a birthing amulet (fig.
165). Some figurines probably represent sha-
manistic spirit helpers (Birket-Smith 1953:127).
Finally, finds of drum handles and rims at Karluk
should be added to the inventory of Late Koniag
ceremonial objects.

163. Miniature Masks

Karluk 1 site, Kodiak I., Alaska
Koniag, a.d. 1500-1750:

Koniag, Inc.: UA 85.193.4026 (left),
UA 85.193.6311

164. Dance Mask and Attachments
Unga Island, Alaska
Aleut, late prehistoric: NMNH 13002
(mask), 13082R, 13002N, 13082R
The features of this mask, with its
massive nose, open nostrils designed
to serve as eyeholes, wide mouth,
pegged teeth, and incised tattoo-like
facial designs, are typical of the
masks from the Unga Island burial
cave. They have no close parallels in
either ethnographic or archeological
collections, and remain undated. A
bar behind the mouth served as a
tooth grip for holding the mask in
place. Hundreds of flat decorative
pieces, most of them probably attach¬
ments for the masks, lay scattered on
the floor of the cave. The leftmost
example represents a harpoon head.

165. Birthing Amulet

Karluk 1 site, Kodiak I., Alaska
Koniag, a.d. 1500-1750:

Koniag, Inc.: uncataloged
This figurine, with her swollen stom¬
ach and supporting hands behind,
seems to be very pregnant, perhaps
in labor. She may have been a birth¬
ing amulet, or symbol of fertility. Her
head is decorated with inset human
hair.

136

Comparisons West and East: Aleutian and
Northwest Coast Developments

The Aleutian Tradition

domed, sod-covered structures with stone and
whalebone wall foundations, probable roof en¬
trances, interior hearths, and stone-lined storage
pits (Aigner 1978). In one of these early (2000
b.c. ) houses at Chaluka a small stone figure was
found of the type termed an "Image of the
Diety” by modern Aleuts, which would have
been suspended from the rafters as a powerful
protecting spirit of the house. The much larger
longhouse type (sometimes exceeding 200 feet
in length), in which individual family quarters
were spatially arranged according to rank, may
be less than 500 years old, although its evolution
has not been traced archeologically. As on Ko¬
diak Island, multiple-family dwellings must have
evolved as populations grew and social organi¬
zation became structured around large cooper-
kin groups under the leadership of high-
. Labrets and other ornaments
social information about status also
increase in number and variety from the lower
Chaluka levels (beginning at 2000 b.c.) to the
uppermost level (17th century). These changes
occurred while most types of hunting weapons
and other artifacts remained basically the same,
discounting the theory that late prehistoric de¬
velopments resulted from an influx of a new
population and culture into the Aleutians.

Some of the most striking art known from an
archeological context in the Aleutians was re¬
moved from a burial cave on Unga Island in the
late 19th century (Pinart 1875; Dali 1876; fig.
164). Such burial caves were used for the place¬
ment of elaborately prepared mummies of men,
women, and children, along with offerings and
ceremonial equipment of various kinds, including
dance masks. The mummies, known as "the dry
ones”, were thought to carry on all the activities
of daily life during the night, including hunting,
eating, and dancing.

Interesting parallels to the Kodiak sequence may
be traced through the layers of the Chaluka site
on Umnak Island in the eastern Aleutians. Aleu¬
tian mound sites, the remains of coastal villages
that began to be settled after 2500 b.c., contain
many artifacts relating to maritime hunting and
fishing, including barbed harpoon heads, fish¬
hooks, and spears. Ground slate tools are rare
because of a lack of local slate sources, and

knives, scrapers, and projectile points were
chipped from basalt, obsidian, greenstone, and
chert. Faunal remains from the midden deposits
(over 20 feet thick at Chaluka) include seals, sea
lions, whales, sea otters, fish, birds, mollusks,
and sea urchins, to which the ancient Aleutians
added berries, seaweed, and a few other plant
foods. As on Kodiak and the Northwest Coast,
salmon was a critical resource.

Parallel to Kodiak developments, a dramatic
increase in house size is seen between the small
single-family structures of 2500 to 2000 b.c. and
the large, multifamily longhouses known from
the historic period. The earlier houses were

166. Harpoon Head

Chaluka site, Umnak I.

Prehistoric Aleut, undated: NMNH
395958 (head),

395999 (chipped stone point)
Bilaterally barbed bone harpoon head
for sea mammal hunting, excavated
by Ales Hrdlicka in 1938.

137

Middle and Late Periods on the Northern Northwest Coast

Northwest Coast prehistory may be divided into
three periods: Early (8000-3000 b.c.), Middle
(3000 b.c.-a.d. 500), and Late (a.d. 500-present)
(Carlson 1983). As discussed earlier, it was the
settlement of the large coastal winter villages
that marks the beginning of the Middle period.
The most extensive archeological research car¬
ried out on the northern Northwest Coast so far
has been at coastal midden sites on the shores
of Prince Rupert Harbour, British Columbia, in
Tsimshian country. These sites were occupied
from about 2500 b.c. into the contact period and
provide evidence for the gradual emergence of
the complex Northwest Coast social system and
of the totemic crest art associated with it. Good
information on temporal changes in house size
and form is not available, but trade networks,
status-related elaboration in ornaments and bur¬
ial goods, and evidence of shamanism and war¬
fare all appear to increase through time.

Before 1 500 b.c. there is no evidence at Prince
Rupert for graphic or sculptural art, and perfo¬
rated tooth pendants are the only items of
personal adornment that have been preserved.
Beaver tooth knives for carving wood are found,
however, cautioning us to remember that with¬
out wood preservation most Northwest Coast
art of the ethnographic period would have been
invisible in an archeological site. By 1000 b.c.
labrets and bone pendants appear, and small
stone carvings of abstracted animal forms fore¬
shadow future developments in art (fig. 168). It
is over the next 1500 years (the remainder of
the Middle period) that some of the most dra¬
matic changes occur, however. Along with grad¬
ual changes in tool types that will not be dis¬
cussed here, a new inventory of decorative items
develops, often incorporating exotic raw mate¬
rials that point to the expanded importance of
trade: shell, amber, dentalium, and jet beads;
copper earrings and bracelets and copper-
wrapped tubes that may have been part of rod
or slat armor; bent bone bracelets with elaborate
incised designs. Bone and stone war clubs appear
in graves and caches, and the use of such clubs
in war is grimly documented by the occurrence
of skulls with crushing indentations. Ribbed
amulets are found after 500 b.c., which are
probably highly abstracted fish forms used in
salmon ceremonies. Organic materials pre¬

served at the waterlogged Lachane site dem¬
onstrate that boxes, bowls, baskets, and other
artifacts made of perishable materials were very
similar to those produced by the historic Tsim¬
shian, although still mostly undecorated.

The first real evidence for the development
of the abstract formline style of Northwest Coast
graphic art is seen in the bone and antler combs
that appear at Prince Rupert between a.d. 500
and 1000 (fig. 169). It is quite probable that this
style was simultaneously being applied in a
wood medium, as seen in ethnographic boxes,

bowls, and other carved items known ethno-
graphically but not preserved in archeological
levels of this period. Indeed, with the application
of zoomorphic carving to pecked stone artifacts
such as mauls, adzes, and bowls between a.d.
1000 and 1500, the essential elements of Tsim¬
shian and other Northwest Coast art styles were
in place. We may also speculate that the social
meanings behind the art, which were concerned
with the totemic animal symbolism of corporate
lineages, were developing parallel to, if not
driving, the emergence of the new art. Bone
pins, zoomorphic labrets, and other new deco¬
rative items added in the Late period continue
the trend, seen at Prince Rupert as well as all
along the northeastern Pacific coast, of elabo¬
rating personal adornment, probably linked to
the emergence of an elite stratum of society.

187. Eye Amulet

Gitlakdamiks, British Columbia: un¬
dated, CMC VII-C-271

168. Raven Amulet
Boardwalk site, British Columbia
ca. 1000 b.c.

CMC GbTo-31:2178
Raven makes an early appearance in
the prehistoric sequence at Prince
Rupert Harbor in the form of this
carved schist amulet. It is perforated
through the tail for suspension, and
the hollowed eye sockets may once
have held abalone shell inlays.

169. Prehistoric Carvings from Prince

Rupert Harbour Sites

Bone Comb (1st millennium a.d., CMC

GbTo-34:1805)

This comb shows the use of the eyes,
U's, and split-U forms of classic North¬
west Coast design.

Miniature War Club (ca. a.d. 100, CMC
GbTo— 3 1:211)

A shaman often used ceremonial weap¬
ons to fight supernatural battles, which
may explain the function of this minia¬
ture club.

Bone Comb (ca. a.d. 800, CMC
GbTo-23:850)

A wolf is depicted, with an emphasis on
its eye, extended tongue, and skeletal
ribs.

Segmented Stone (ca. 500 b.c., CMC
GbTo-31:X717)

A highly abstracted fish or animal form,
this carving shows the ribs and verte¬
brae only, with head and tail eliminated.

138

Overview

170. Late Prehistoric Northwest
Coast Stone Carving
(Clockwise from upper left)

Tobacco Mortar (Skeena River, British
Columbia, undated, NMNH 220185)
Stone Club (Fish) (Metlakatla, British
Columbia, undated, CMC XII-B-560)
Pestle Queen Charlotte Islands, British
Columbia, CMC VII-B-908)

Tobacco Mortar (Frog) (Queen Charlotte
Islands, British Columbia, CMC XII-B-
317)

The prehistory of Alaska's Pacific coast peoples
is a complicated story for prehistorians to piece
together. This was a region that came to support
large human populations with diverse and com¬
plex cultural traditions, all in a state of constant
interaction and change. During the Paleoarctic
period a single cultural tradition was present
over most of Alaska and eastern Siberia, but
from that point on the Pacific coast region of
Alaska followed its own course of development,
largely independent from the dynamics of the
Bering Sea cultural sphere. This must have been
largely the result of the contrasting ecologies of
the icy Bering Sea and the relatively warm Pacific
Ocean, with its more diverse marine fauna and
considerably greater resources of fish and shell¬
fish, and the implications of these resources for
the growth of more densely packed human
populations in the south. If we compare cultures
within the Pacific region, some general patterns
of similarity and difference emerge that operate
on different levels of culture.

At the basic economic level, Aleut, Koniag-
Chugach, and northern Northwest Coast cultures
had similar adaptations to the environment. This
observation includes seasonal patterns of settle¬
ment, reliance on watercraft, and dependence
on the harvesting and storage of salmon, and
extends to many specific tool and implement
types; barbed harpoon and dart heads, com¬
pound fishhooks and net sinkers, and stone lamps
for burning sea mammal oil are only a few
examples. It is clear, moreover, that many tech¬
nical innovations appeared throughout the re¬
gion at about the same time in prehistory, most
notably the replacement of microblades and
chipped stone tools by ground slate implements.
It is on this cultural level that it is easy to point
out parallel developments among Siberian cul¬
tures at similar latitudes (large coastal settle¬
ments, adoption of ground slate tools, stone oil
lamps, large semisubterranean houses without
entrance tunnels), which may or may not imply
direct contact across the Aleutian chain. A strong
candidate for direct diffusion by this route is the
practice of poison dart whaling by the Itelmen,
Aleuts, Koniag, and Chugach, which appears to
have its origins even farther south in the highly
developed use of poisons by hunting cultures of
the Kurile and Japanese archipelagos (Heizer
1943).

139

171. Petroglyph (cast)

Tsimshian

Skeletized human figures and bears
dance together on this petroglyph
from Ringbolt Island in the Skeena
River, British Columbia. It probably
depicts spiritual communication be¬
tween shamans and bears, who were
animal masters (MacDonald 1983).
The location of the panel in a major
salmon river suggests that there may
be a connection with First Salmon
ceremonies.

172. Whale Bone Club

Boardwalk site. Prince Rupert Har¬
bour, b.c., ca. 500 b.c., CMC
GbTo-31 :522

A warrior's cache excavated at the
Boardwalk site contained copper-
wrapped armor rods, a stone dagger,
copper bracelets, and carved war
clubs, including this specimen The
face design is composed of ovoids
and U-forms, and is surmounted by
an animal image.

The development of complex social structures
also presents a remarkable linking theme among
Alaskan Pacific cultures and appears to have
resulted from a general process of cultural adap¬
tation to both the opportunities of the environ¬
ment and the stresses of population growth.
Increased trade and warfare have been traced
as components of this development.

As these complex social systems emerged
during the millennia following 3000 B.c., so did
a more elaborate and intense ceremonial life
and an increased emphasis on artistic expres¬
sion. It is at this level of culture that diversity
becomes increasingly evident throughout the
late prehistory of Alaska's Pacific region. At one
end of the spectrum of South Alaskan artistic
traditions is Aleut art, with its accomplishments
in fine grass weaving, decorated clothing, unique
mask styles, and the manufacture of painted and
highly ornamented hunting hats. Northwest Coast
art, with its totemic symbolism and complex
graphic style, appears to have started its dis¬
tinctive course of development around a.d. 500
or earlier. The artistic and ceremonial Koniag
inventory that develops through the upper levels
at Karluk 1 is equally distinctive yet definitely
Eskimo. Painted designs on wooden carvings
and bowls are simple and Eskimoid, with no
trace of Northwest Coast formline designs. Most
masks resemble those of the Bering Sea Eskimo,
to whom the Koniag were also related linguis¬
tically.

The links between Tlingit and Pacific Eskimo
art as known from the contact period are nu¬
merous (Holm, this volume) yet have not for the
most part been documented archeologically,
even from the large and well-preserved Karluk
sample. Both twined grass and spruce-root bas¬
kets have been found there, but woven hats
have not been found in the midden. Frame
fragments of a puffin beak rattle, used by the
Koniag, Chugach. and Tlingit, have been found
in the uppermost Karluk house floor. On the
other hand, goat horn spoons have not been
found, nor have dentalium shells, a Northwest
Coast import and highly valued decorative ele¬
ment on Koniag and Chugach jewelry and hats
during the contact period. This largely negative
evidence seems to indicate that strong Tlingit
influence on Koniag and Chugach art was prob¬
ably a very late precontact phenomenon and
may have been accentuated by the Russian
practice of taking large fleets of Koniag, Chu¬
gach, and Aleut hunters into Tlingit waters to
hunt sea otters.

140

Thematic v

3HHHSpg

IlgiPffl

<■ ’•

■ .' • '

msm

lllfii

■NHS

Raven's Creatures

Milton M. R. Freeman

173. Biological Productivity in the
North Pacific-Beringian Region
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
This map shows summer concentra¬
tions of phytoplankton (floating
microscopic plants) in the surface
waters north and south of Bering
Strait, composited from satellite im¬
agery for June-September 1979, with
the ice margin for mid-August. Phyto¬
plankton concentration is indicative of
general marine productivity, which is
highest in shallow coastal regions,
especially in the Okhotsk Sea, northern
Bering Sea, and along the ice-free
margins of the Arctic Ocean. The ice-
edge margin (ice is shown as white)
is particularly productive. The areas
of high phytoplankton productivity
seen here in red/yellow coincide with
the major summer feeding grounds of
whales. No data was available from
areas shown in black.

The near-shore waters around the margin of the
North Pacific are one of the most ecologically
productive high latitude environments in the
world (fig. 173). High marine productivity is
coupled with a biogeography that concentrates
resources in rivers and streams, at island passes,
and along continental margins, making rich food
supplies accessible to native hunters and fish¬
ermen. For these reasons almost all societies of
the North Pacific Rim had a maritime component
in their economies, and even inland peoples
depended in part on salmon which spent most
of their lives in the sea.

Unlike the land, the northern seas do not
experience wide temperature differences be¬
tween summer and winter; the ocean waters
hover at or a few degrees above the freezing
point. Since all forms of life inhabiting these
low-temperature waters are cold-adapted, nu¬
trient availability rather than temperature is
most significant in determining abundance and
variety of life. Sunlight, the controlling factor, is
nearly absent during the long arctic winter and
nearly continuous during summer.

The waters of the greater North Pacific Ocean
extend north to the Bering Strait and encompass
the Bering Sea and the Okhotsk Sea. North of
Bering Strait are the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.

All these seas are cold, being influenced by
currents originating in the Arctic Ocean, and
have seasonal ice cover. However, along the
American coast, including the Aleutian chain, a
strong current sweeping across from Japan con¬
tributes warmer water, resulting in winters mostly
free of sea ice. Absence of sea ice allows the
development of rich marine plant and animal
communities in intertidal and shallow coastal
waters. Production of microscopic and small¬
sized plant and animal plankton species is es¬
sentially a summer phenomenon especially in
ice-edge waters (fig. 173).

The result of high plankton productivity is an
abundance of animals higher on the food chain
that are of direct importance to man. Those
easiest to harvest are the edible crabs, molluscs,
and sea urchins, species that, in turn, support
higher life forms such as fish, birds, and sea
mammals that supplied natives with most of the
means for survival. More abundant, diverse, and
stable than land species, these marine species
provided the basis for the larger and more
sedentary human populations that inhabit the
coastal regions of the North Pacific and Beringian
regions.

Of the more than 2,000 species of fish in the
region, salmon were of greatest importance to

142

man because their spawning behavior brought
them to shores and rivers where they could be
caught. Five species of salmon return annually
to North American rivers to breed, and six
species return to Japanese and Siberian rivers.
The richness of cultural development in the
North Pacific region owes more to the abundance
and security provided by salmon than to any
other species. Other fish, like herring, mackerel,
cod, and pollack, migrate annually into shallow
coastal waters where they can be caught, and
they are followed by larger predators such as
seals and whales (fig. 207) that, in turn, become
available to coastal hunters.

Especially important in arctic marine ecosys¬
tems are the large marine mammals, including
polar bears (north of Bering Strait), sea lions,
several seal species, sea otters, walrus, whales,
and the now-extinct Steller sea cow. The gre¬
garious nature of sea otters, walrus, and sea
lions facilitated native hunting. Migratory spe¬
cies like whales brought the resource base of
the greater Pacific Ocean within reach of north¬
ern hunters, whereas resident species like wal¬
rus and ice-dwelling seals provided northern
hunters with winter sustenance.

Both in North America and Siberia the most
important feature of land ecology is the distinc¬
tion between forest and tundra (fig. 1). Wood
was of great importance to man, and its absence
in arctic regions delayed human settlement here
for thousands of years. In North America the
northern boreal forest is dominated by black
spruce, whereas on the Siberian side of Bering
Strait larch is the dominant northern tree spe¬
cies. However, on both continents, willows, ald¬
ers, and occasional birch stands extend north
into the tundra in protected river valleys, some¬
times to the shore of the Arctic Ocean itself,
where by default driftwood was the primary
source of wood. In these regions the availability
of driftwood was important.

Winters in these northern regions are long
and cold. Although summers are short, long
hours of sunshine result in a surprising abun¬
dance of life. For man, the most important land
mammals are herbivores: wild caribou in North
America and their domesticated relative, rein¬
deer, in Siberia; without their meat, warm fur,
sinew, antler, and bone, human survival in the
northern interior would not have been possible.
Black and brown (grizzly) bears, moose, Dali
sheep, mountain goats, otters, and beaver and

other rodents played more minor roles. The
carnivores (wolves, wolverines, lynx, mink) were
less numerous and less important to man as
food, but they contributed skins and furs for
garments and other manufactures. Most of these
animals were present on both sides of Bering
Strait, an exception being the porcupine, which
does not occur in Siberia.

The immense birdlife of the North Pacific
region, many species of which are also migra¬
tory, was also important for human survival. In
addition to their food value, bird skins and
feathers contributed to clothing, ornamentation,
and religious life. Finally, this survey would not
be complete without mention of the many edible
plant resources available, including the berries,
leafy salad plants, and some small tuberous

174. Walrus Herd on the Chukotka
Coast

Survival of human populations in Ber¬
ing Strait and along the coasts of the
Arctic ocean would not be possible
without the large walrus herds that
frequent these regions. Walruses,
gregarious creatures, live near the
edge of the arctic pack ice, migrating
with the seasonal advance and re¬
treat of the pack from its winter mar¬
gin in the southern Bering Sea to its
summer position north of the Arctic
Ocean coast. In addition to walrus
providing meat for men and dogs, its
blubber was a source of fuel for cook¬
ing and lighting, its hide was used to
cover boat frames, and its ivory tusks
and bones provided raw material for
innumerable items, from harpoons to
ornaments.

roots, that add vitamins and tasty treats to the
dominant fish, meat, and fat diet.

In the end, biological richness and diversity
coupled with the accumulation of human knowl¬
edge led to the development of the complex
cultures of the North Pacific region. That this
knowledge could be distributed rapidly through¬
out a wide region, as demonstrated by the spread
of the aconite poison hunting technique for
hunting large whales (p. 172), contributed to
producing cultural similarities noted in this vast
region.

Opposite:

"[Aleut] Inhabitant of Unimak Island
Named Umasik, Baptised Vasili"
(Mikhail Tikhanov, 1817,

RIPSA 2123)

143

, ■ j\ /

Chuvantsy

^^^(Yukaghir) Naukanski ^

l> /

Sirenikski/i

Siberian

Yupik

>, / • ■

TABLE 2

1980 Populations and Speakers of North Pacific Region Languages

Language Family

Language Name

Population Speakers

TUNGUSIC

Udege

1,600

500

Oroch

1,200

490

Nanai/Goldi (USSR)

10,500

5.860

* Nanai/Goldi (China)

1,476

300

Ulcha

2,600

1,010

* Orok

400

Negidal

500

220

* Solon (China)

19,343

19,000

Evenk/Tungus (USSR)

28.000

12,070

* Evenk/Tungus (Mongolia)

2,000

* Evenk/Tungus (Oroqen: China)

4,132

4,000

Even/Lamut

12,000

6,800

NIVKHI/G1LYAK

□

Nivkhi

4,400

1,350

AINU

Ainu

15,000

TURKIC

Yakut

328,000

312,000

YUKAGH1R

Yukaghir

800

300

CHUKOTKO-

* Itelmen/Kamchadal

1,400

100

KAMCHATKAN

Koryak and Aliutor

7,900

5,450

* Aliutor subtotal

2,800

1,930

Kerek

400

<100

Chukchi

14,000

10,960

ESKIMO-ALEUT

Inupiaq (Alaska)

12,500

5,000

Sirenikski

Siberian Yupik

2,000

1,550

* Chaplinski (USSR) subtotal

900

500

* St. Lawrence Is. (USA) sub.

1,100

1,050

* Naukanski

400

200

Central Alaskan Yupik

18,000

13,000

Pacific Gulf Yupik

3,100

800

Aleut (USA)

2,100

700

* Aleut (USSR)

300

Language Family Language Name Population Speakers

ATHAPASKAN- | | Ahtna

500

100

EYAK Tanaina

800

150

Ingalik

400

Innoko

150

Koyukon

2500

650

Upper Kuskokwim

150

120

Tanana

350

Tanacross

200

100

Upper Tanana

300

200

Han

260

Kutchin

2,200

1,000

~j Eyak

TLINGIT | | Tlingit

10,000

2,000

HAIDA | | Haida

1,700

250

TSIMSHIAN Mil Coast Tsimshian

3,500

200

Nass-Gitksan

6.000

3,000

WAKASHAN H Haisla

(KWAKIUTLAN)

1,000 a few

hundred

Heiltsuk-Oowekyala

1,400

ca.250

Kwakiutl

3,500

1,000

WAKASHAN H Nootka

(NOOTKAN) Nitinat

4,700

1-2,000
ca. 60

Makah

1,000

ca. 25

SALISHAN | | Bella Coola

1,300

<1,000

Note: Unless otherwise marked (*). figures for USSR groups are from the USSR
1979 census (with number of speakers converted from percentages) and adapted
from Krauss 1982 map of Alaska Native Languages and from Handbook of North
American Indians. Volumes 5 (Arctic). Volume 6 (Subarctic), and Volume 7
(Northwest Coast, forthcoming).

144

Many Tongues— Ancient Tales

Michael E. Krauss

175. Languages of the Greater North
Pacific Region, a.d. 1900

The native languages shown on the map of the
North Pacific area (fig. 175) fall into four main
families or groupings, two on the American side
of the Bering Strait and two on the Asiatic. From
the earliest days of European discovery in this
part of the world, linguists have considered
possible genetic relationships between Ameri¬
can language families and ones in Asia, whence
they must have come. Though debate is as lively
today as ever before, still no proof of genetic
relationship of any native American language
family to any Asiatic language family has yet
been offered that satisfies even a majority of
linguists who have carefully studied such sub¬
jects.

So the question remains not whether Ameri¬
can languages came from Asia, which most
linguists agree must be so, but rather whether
any link between specific families has been
convincingly demonstrated. At best, such ge¬

netic relationships are certainly not obvious, as
they are for instance between English and Ger¬
man, or French and Spanish, and even between
Germanic and Romance (both being branches of
Indo-European). Rather, if they exist, they have
been obscured by the passage of time, for
establishing convincing links as one approaches
5,000 years of language separation becomes
increasingly difficult, and as separations increase
toward 10,000 years, it becomes generally im¬
possible. Negative proof, that any two languages
are not related, not descended from a common
ancestor, is of course impossible. It is therefore
possible that all the world's languages might
ultimately be related. Thus, as yet, linguistic
links between Asia and America remain un¬
proven with the single obvious exception of
Eskimo, of which closely related varieties are
found on both sides of the Bering Strait.

176. Na-Dene Language Group

Language Families
Na-Dene

The dominant Indian language family of north¬
western America is called Na-Dene, coined by
Edward Sapir (1915) from the Haida and Atha-
paskan words for "people.'' This family consists
of Haida, Tlingit, Eyak, and Athapaskan, whose
relationships are shown in figure 176. Athapas¬
kan is itself a large family of closely related

, r~ Haida

~~i _ _ Tlingit

! ” “ _____________ Eyak

_ - — - - Athapaskan

languages. Centering inland, Athapaskan has
spread far beyond its original area of some 2,000
years ago, perhaps in the upper Yukon River
region, throughout much of interior Alaska and
northwestern Canada, and thence to southern
Oregon and northern California, and separately
in the Southwest, where it is spoken by Navajo
and Apache. The Athapaskan family is a complex
of languages and dialects, which consists of
some 30 languages, 1 1 of which are found in
Alaska. Today there are over 230,000 Athapas-
kans; 10,000 are Native Alaskan, 25,000 Cana¬
dian, 3,000 Californian and Oregonian, and
195,000 Navajo and Apache.

Coordinate to this vast Athapaskan family is
the subbranch Eyak, a single language, which is
now nearly extinct. Formerly spoken on the Gulf
of Alaska coast from Yakutat Bay to Comptroller

145

Bay, where it was being progressively assimi¬
lated to Tlingit, its last stronghold at Eyak Lake
was discovered by Frederica de Laguna in 1930.
Eyak proves to be an important link in showing
genetic relationship between Athapaskan and
Tlingit.

Of the many languages of the Northwest
Coast, Tlingit occupies by far the longest stretch,
virtually the whole of the Alaska Panhandle. A
single language, Tlingit is easily intelligible
throughout its wide distribution because of a
relatively recent expansion from the south, judg¬
ing from the greater dialectical differences within
Southern Tlingit. The Tlingit population is ap¬
proximately 10,000, some of which expanded
into the interior of the Yukon Territory in early
contact times. The genetic relationship of Tlingit
to Athapaskan-Eyak is more distant and some¬
what problematical in that although its gram¬
matical structure is very similar to the Athapas¬
kan-Eyak, much of its vocabulary seems to be
unrelated and may come from some other un¬
known population.

Another major Northwest Coast power was
the Haida, who inhabit the Queen Charlotte
Islands and took over the southern half of Prince
of Wales Island from the Tlingit in the early
18th century. After a catastrophic decline from
10,000 to 2,000 in the 19th century, the South¬
ern Haida survivors gathered at Skidegate and
the Northern survivors at Masset on the Queen
Charlotte side and at Hydaburg in Alaska. North¬
ern and Southern Haida are highly divergent
dialects, only partly intelligible to one another.
Sapir was the most influential of the linguists
who have asserted that Haida in turn is genet¬
ically related to Athapaskan-Eyak-Tlingit, and
he named the family Na-Dene to reflect this link.
Franz Boas remained skeptical about this and
about Athapaskan-Tlingit ties, and many modern
specialists dispute it.

Eskimo-Aleut

The Eskimo-Aleut family (fig. 1 77) is best known
for its importance in arctic Canada and Green¬
land, but this represents the recent expansion
over the last 1,000 years of but one branch of
Eskimo, the Inuit, while the Yupik branch of the
family and the Aleut language remain in their
ancestral homelands about the Bering Sea.

Though recognized on a sound basis as ge¬
netically related to Eskimo in 1818 by Rasmus
Rask, the divergence between Aleut and Eskimo
is far greater than any divergence within Eskimo,
about what might be expected after 4,000 years
or more, more than twice the time to which the
divergence within Eskimo might be attributed.
The sharp linguistic border between Aleut and

Aleut

Sirenikski

Central Siberian
Yupik

Naukanski

Yupik

Central Alaskan
Yupik

Pacific Gulf
Yupik

Inuit

177. Eskimo-Aleut Language Family

Eskimo is no doubt due not to ancient separation
but rather to the complete elimination of pre¬
historic intermediate languages by Eskimo and
Aleut, which now meet on the Alaska Peninsula.
Today Aleut is a single language with two main
dialects. Western (Attuan and Atkan subdialects)
and Eastern. The Aleut population was severely
reduced during the 18th century. Also during
the Russian period, colonies of Aleuts were
established on the Pribilof and Commander is¬
lands and remain there to this day.

The Inuit branch of Eskimo (Inupiaq in Alaska,
Inuktitut in Canada, Kalaallisut in Greenland) is
a continuum of interconnecting dialects, as might
be expected from their recent spread. Inuit is
practically a national language in Greenland,
with 45,000 speakers and an important literature
since the 18th century. It is strong, too, in
Canada, especially in the East, with 18,000
speakers among a population of 25,000. Inuit
seems destined to remain the major native
language of the New World Arctic. The dialect
(Imaklikskii) spoken by the few Inuit remaining
in 1948 on Big Diomede Island in the Soviet
Union is now extinct.

The Yupik branch of Eskimo is a broken chain
of five languages, which once must have con¬
nected from the Alaska mainland to the Chukchi
Peninsula via the Seward Peninsula. Pacific Gulf
Yupik (also known as Sugpiaq, Alutiiq, Suk, and
popularly also known as Aleut because of Rus¬
sian tradition) consists of two main dialects,
Chugach and Koniag. This population was also
severely reduced, from about 10,000 to 3,000,
during the colonial period.

Central Alaskan Yupik is the largest ethnic
group in Alaska and is the language now spoken
by the largest number of native persons in both
the American and Soviet sides of the North
Pacific Rim. It is a single well-defined language
with four dialects diverging from the main one:
Egegik (Aglegmuit-Tarupiaq); Nunivak; Hooper
Bay— Chevak, diverging in the direction of Pacific

146

178. Chukotko-Kamchatkan Language
Group

Gulf Yupik; and Unaliq in Norton Sound, diverg¬
ing in the direction of Siberian Yupik or Nau-
kanski in the Soviet Union.

The next link in the Yupik chain is Naukanski,
spoken at Naukan on East Cape and since 1958
mainly in St. Lawrence Bay. This language is in
several respects intermediate between Central
Alaskan Yupik and Siberian Yupik. Siberian Yu¬
pik was spoken by the Eskimo along most of the
east coast of the Chukchi Peninsula during the
19th century and perhaps also along its Arctic
Ocean coast. Siberian Yupik was and still is not
only the main Eskimo language of the Soviet
Union, where it is known as Chaplinski, but is
also virtually identical with the language of St.
Lawrence Island, Alaska, where it is now spoken
by an even larger number of people, including
most children.

Sirenikski is now remembered by only two
elderly persons at Sireniki. All but replaced by
Chaplinski, Sirenikski is a relic of the Eskimo
language earlier spoken more widely on the
southern coast of the Chukchi Peninsula. Sir¬
enikski shows evidence of having been so dif¬
ferent from Chaplinski that it should perhaps be
classed not only as a separate branch of Yupik
but also as a coordinate subbranch of Eskimo,
with Yupik, as shown in figure 177, or even as
a third branch of Eskimo.

It is proposed that the Eskimo languages on
the Siberian side represent relatively minor
westward movement back to and into the Chuk¬
chi Peninsula from Alaska, and that Sirenikski
represents the oldest wave of that movement,
Siberian Yupik the second, and Naukanski the
latest. The Yupik chain was then broken between
Asia and America not by the Bering Strait but
by progressive Inuit occupation of Seward Pen¬
insula, while on the Asiatic side Chukchi ex¬
panded into much of the coastline during the
late prehistoric period.

Chukotko-Kamchatkan

On the Soviet side, except for Eskimo and
Commander Island Aleut, the easternmost lan¬
guage family or grouping may be called Chu-

“ ” “ i
i
i
i

Kamchatkan

Southern

Western

Kamchadal

Northeastern

Chukchi-

Koryak

_ Aliutor

_ Koryak

_ Kerek

_ Chukchi

kotko-Kamchatkan, consisting of two groups: the
Itelmen (Kamchadal) and Chukchi-Koryak. Itel-
men was formerly spoken throughout most of
Kamchatka in three forms, which may have been
separate languages rather than dialects, by a
population of perhaps 20,000. Kamchatka was
Russianized early, however, and the population
was decimated; only Western Itelmen remained
long into this century, and that too is now
approaching extinction.

The Chukchi-Koryak group, though tradition¬
ally considered to consist of two, or more re¬
cently four, languages, is perhaps no more
diverse than Itelmen was and might yet be
considered as a single complex or chain of
dialects. The largest and most uniform by far is
Chukchi, represented also by the largest popu¬
lation of any of the Soviet native groups on the
North Pacific. On the coast between Chukchi and
Koryak is Kerek, formerly considered a dialect
of Chukchi or of Koryak and now recognized as
a separate language, but now also nearing ex¬
tinction. Within Koryak itself there is significant
dialectal diversity; the southern three Koryak
subgroups are now considered by some author¬
ities to be a separate language, named Aliutor.
The markedly decreasing diversity within Chu¬
kotko-Kamchatkan from Kamchatka towards
Chukotka may well imply that this family spread
in a northeastward direction. Some authorities
even propose that Kamchadal is genetically re¬
lated to Chukchi-Koryak (fig. 178).

Tungusic and Others

Southwest of the Chukotko-Kamchatkan lan¬
guage area is the Tungusic (fig. 179). The major
language group of the mainland Okhotsk shore
belongs to the northern branch of this Tungusic
family. Two languages of this branch, Evenk and
Even, have undergone vast expansion. Evenk
(or Tungus) is found even past the Yenisey,
2,000 miles to the west, while Even (or Lamut)
not only dominates the upper Kolyma region
but has also spread to the Arctic Ocean, the
Lena River, and Kamchatka. However, the den¬
sity of Northern Tungusic speakers in the Soviet
Union is low, 28,000 Evenk and 12,000 Even,
and is mixed with Yakut and others and increas¬
ingly with Russian. Negidal is a third variety of
Northern Tungusic spoken by a small group on
the Lower Amur. Still other varieties of Northern
Tungusic are spoken on the Chinese side of the
Amur, Orochen and Solon, both probably most
similar to Evenk.

The Southern Tungusic languages are a far
more compact and diversified branch, subdi¬
vided into the Southeastern and Southwestern
subbranches. Southwestern Tungusic is Manchu,

147

now said to be approaching extinction but once
the language of the ruling class of China and an
empire. Southeastern Tungusic, the dominant
language group of the Amur region, is in turn
divided into two subgroups, the Nanai-Ulcha-
Orok and the Udege-Oroch; the Nanai (or Goldi)
are numerically by far the largest group. Here
again, the much greater diversity of Tungusic
in the south probably implies northward spread.

Another language that has undergone a vast
and spectacular spread into Northeastern Si¬
beria, still more recently, during the last few
centuries, is Yakut, belonging to the expansive
Turkic family, whose origin must lie far to the
southwest. Yakuts are by far the most numerous
of all Native Siberians, numbering more than
300,000 and occupying much of Siberia to the
arctic coast, now even to the Okhotsk shore.

It was, however, the Yukaghir that were
formerly spread over the largest part of North¬
eastern Siberia. As in the case of the Northern
Tungusic, Yukaghir population density was very
low. They once occupied most of the northern
Yakut and Even territory but are now reduced
to one of the smallest of Soviet nationalities, in
two widely separated and divergent dialect en¬
claves, the Tundra and Upper Kolyma. The
Yukaghir language is not proven to be genetically
related to any other.

Another such isolated language is the Nivkhi
(or Gilyak) of the Lower Amur and northern
Sakhalin, not yet shown to be genetically related

Southern

Tungusic

Northern

Tungusic

Manchu

Nanai

Ulcha

Orok

Oroch

Udege

Solon

Negidal

Evenk

Even

179. Tungusic Language Family

to any other. Ainu, formerly spoken on the Kurile
Islands and southern Sakhalin, where it is en¬
tirely extinct, and on Hokkaido in northern Japan,
where it is nearly extinct, is also not yet proven
to be genetically related to any other.

Yukaghir and Nivkhi, and sometimes Ainu,
have been classed together with Chukotko-Kam-
chatkan in a grouping called Paleosiberian or
Paleoasiatic. This grouping does not imply any
claims of genetic relationship but rather empha¬
sizes that these languages are relics of families
much more ancient to the Soviet Far East than
the Tungusic and Turkic, which expanded more
recently into it from the south and west.

Asian-American Comparisons

The general direction of these movements ac¬
cords with the obvious eastward trend across
the Bering Strait area. Of the movements of
languages into America, a most recent theory
(Greenberg 1987) is that all but Na-Dene and
Eskimo-Aleut belong to a single family called
Amerind that came to America 12,000 to 1 5,000
years ago. Though this theory of the genetic
unity of Amerind has not won widespread ac¬
ceptance, the notion that Na-Dene, as previously
noted by Sapir (1916:455), belonged to a differ¬
ent and later wave, and Eskimo to a still later
wave, is more widely accepted. Even these much
later movements, of approximately 6000—7000
and 4000—5000 years ago according to Green¬
berg, are old enough that most linguists do not
believe Asiatic links for them are proven. Never¬
theless Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Dene remain of
course the best candidates for such linking'.

The most promising candidate for interconti¬
nental linkage would be Eskimo-Aleut, the new¬
est and westernmost American family, with

Chukotko-Kamchatkan an old and easternmost
Asiatic one. This possibility was examined in
the 1770s by P. Pallas (Coxe 1780:303), who
noted that Aleut was remarkably unlike Koryak
and Itelmen (and Ainu). Although some typo¬
logical similarity in sound and grammatical struc¬
ture exists, studies by linguists over two cen¬
turies attempting to link these two families
(Swadesh 1962) remain disappointing. At best,
they are no more convincing than attempts to
link Eskimo-Aleut with other language families
of Eurasia. As probably the latest in the long
chain of such attempts, one may mention the
ideas of one group of Soviet comparativists
including S. A. Starostin and others who believe
that Eskimo belongs to the so-called Nostratic
macrofamily together with Indo-European, Ur-
alo-Altaic, Semito-Khamitic, Dravidian, and oth¬
ers, while Na-Dene belongs to a quite different
macrofamily together with Sino-Tibetan, Ket,
North Caucasian, Burushaski, and others, called
Sino-Dagestanic.

148

Historical and Modem Development

We shall now consider the historical period,
contact of these languages with Russian and
English, and their present situation. By 1648
Russian speakers had reached East Cape, and a
century later the Aleutians. In 1 778 these people
heard English for the first time, from members
of Capt. James Cook's expedition. Now, in 1988,
the vast majority of each of these native popu¬
lations speaks Russian on the Soviet side and
English on the American (and in most cases, on
both sides, their children now speak only Russian
or English).

However, there are some significant historical
twists to this. During the period 1741 to 1867,
when Alaska was Russian, Russian was the first
contact language for many of the Alaskan groups.
The degree and type of this Russian impact can
be measured by the number of Russian loan
words, usually names for new materials and
concepts, in each. These figures can be calcu¬
lated from our documentation of these languages
and because the diffusion from Russian mostly
ceased after 1867. Aleut has the most, with
about 600; Pacific Gulf Yupik has about 500,
Tanaina Athapaskan about 400, Central Alaskan
Yupik about 200; Koyukon, Upper Kuskokwim,
and Ahtna Athapaskan each have about 80;
Ingalik 60, and Innoko 50. One sees the influence
fading in the three dialects of the Tanana lan¬
guage as one ascends the Tanana River, from
45 to 35 to 25 such loans, with finally 5 in

Language Policy

During the 1830s and 1840s in Alaska the
Russian Orthodox priest Ioann Veniaminov be¬
gan a remarkable mission school system that
included written use of four Alaskan languages:
Aleut, Pacific Gulf Yupik, Central Alaskan Yupik,
and Tlingit, adapting the Cyrillic alphabet rather
well (in the case of the first three) to the sounds
of these languages. The first book, an Aleut
catechism, was printed in 1834. Vernacular
literacy soon became a part of Aleut culture,
and to a lesser extent also in Pacific Gulf and
Central Alaskan Yupik. Toward the end of the
19th century, American missionary work in¬
cluded some written use of several Alaskan
languages, while on the Russian side there was
relatively little such activity. During most of the
19th and 20th century, however, American (and
Canadian) educational systems excluded and
even suppressed the use of these native lan¬
guages. On the Asian side, in contrast, after the
Russian Revolution, Soviet schools began in¬

Tanacross. Upper Tanana, Han, and Kutchin
have no loans from Russian, the first contact
language in that area being "Slavey" jargon
(with French) and English. Eyak has about 30
(mainly via Chugach Yupik). Interestingly, Tlin¬
git has only 9, in spite of the fact that the very
capital of Russian Alaska was in their territory,
an indication of the cultural resistance of the
Tlingit people to Russian domination. In the
Bering Strait area, Russian presence was rela¬
tively weak. In Inupiaq there are about 15
Russian loan words, and on St. Lawrence Island
even fewer, only 10.

In fact, in the Beringian area from about 1850,
and on the Asiatic as well as American side of
the strait into the 1920s, the dominant contact
language was English, first from the Franklin
search expeditions and later from American
whalers and traders. Thus, ironically, the Alas¬
kan Yupik words for butter, soap, cat, and cow
are from Russian: maslaq, miilaq, kuskaq, kulu-
vak; but in Siberian Yupik they are from English:
bara, suupa, kiti, and kaakw. Some of the English
loans can also be found in Chukchi and perhaps
also in Koryak. This exchange of loan words
continues cultural, genetic, and historical ex¬
changes that have characterized the North Pacific
region for millennia and is paralleled most es¬
pecially in the history of ethnological collecting
on which this exhibition rests.

struction in many of the languages of the north¬
ern minority peoples in the early grades, using
books in these languages first during the early
1930s printed in the Roman-based "Alphabet of
the Peoples of the North” but converted to
Cyrillic alphabet in 1936—7. Thus for these
schools books were printed in Soviet Eskimo
(Chaplinski), Chukchi, Koryak, Itelmen, Nivhki,
Even, Evenk, Nanai, and Udege (though not in
Oroch, Ulcha, Orok, Negidal, or Yukaghir, be¬
cause their numbers were so small; not in Kerek,
Aliutor, Sirenikski, or Naukanski, because these
were not officially recognized as separate lan¬
guages). A primer was drafted in Commander
Island Aleut but was not printed, and for Itelmen
and Udege the vernacular programs were short¬
lived or not implemented. For the others, how¬
ever, Soviet educational use and cultivation con¬
tinued into the 1950s. But in the 1960s a policy
began to dominate that resembled the American,
with vernacular education and publication de-

149

dining sharply. In the 1970s American educa¬
tional policy began to favor the use of the native
languages of the area, followed soon also by the
Soviet. However, on each side, under the cultural
pressure of English and Russian, children were
no longer learning their ancestral languages from
their parents. On the American side most of
these languages are spoken now by few or none
under the age of 40, with the exception of St.
Lawrence Island, where most children still learn
the language, as also in a large part of the

Central Alaskan Yupik region, and Aleut at Atka.
The languages on the Soviet side, with the
definite exception of Yakut and possible excep¬
tion of some Chukchi, are now spoken by few
or none under the age of 20. It thus becomes a
race against time to document these languages
as fully as possible before they are lost, and
their revival or survival as living languages in
both Asia and America is a question for the
coming century.

150

Jean-Loup Rousselot, William W. Fitzhugh, and Aron Crowell

Maritime Economies of the North Pacific Rim

180. Tunghak, Keeper of the Game
Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 64241
Yupik Eskimos of western Alaska be¬
lieved that animals were controlled
by a master spirit known as Tunghak.
Tunghak lived in the moon, was part
animal and part human, was ferocious
and powerful, and if displeased could
punish man by withhold animals
from him. One of the roles of the
shaman was to intercede with Tun¬
ghak on man's behalf.

The hoops and feathers on this
mask relate to the Tunghak? s resi¬
dence in the sky. Thumbless hands
may refer to impaired grasp. Pierced
palms signify the hole in the Sky
World which the Tunghak controlled
and through which animals passed to
repopulate the earth.

Most North Pacific and Bering Sea
peoples shared the concept of a game
master, known variously as Keretkun
(Chukchi), Kasak (Asian Eskimo),
Na'ininen (Koryak), and Agudar
(Aleut).

The native peoples of the North Pacific Rim, the
great bicontinental arc that circumscribes the
northern reaches of the Pacific Ocean, occupy
one of the richest maritime environments in the
world. Its varied resources include many species
of sea mammals, fish, birds, and shellfish, which
provide the basis for coastal habitation through¬
out the year. The ocean exerts a strong unifying
influence on the cultures of the region, by
providing common adaptational challenges and
by facilitating human movement and commu¬
nication. It was apparent from the earliest era
of Russian and European exploration that the
seafaring native peoples of the Pacific Rim were
linked together in a long intergrading chain by
similarities in their ways of life and in physical
appearance.

Economic similarities in particular may be
traced great distances along the coasts of the
North Pacific Rim, while adjoining coastal and
inland populations are sharply differentiated in
this respect. Typically, coastal groups lived in
large villages, occupied permanent winter dwell¬
ings on a seasonal or year-round basis, and
accumulated large stores of food during the
spring and summer for consumption in colder
months when food was scarce. Sea mammal
hunting and fishing were of primary importance,
although considerable regional variation oc¬
curred. In northern areas of seasonal sea ice,
sea mammal hunting was more important than
fishing, whereas in regions south of the Aleutian
Islands these conditions were reversed. Hunting

of land animals occurred but was of lesser
economic importance. Throughout the region,
changing seasonal conditions affected the yearly
cycle of economic activity through their effect
on animal migration patterns and weather con¬
ditions. Some pursuits that had great social and
economic importance, such as whaling, could
only be practiced for a brief period each year
and were highly unpredictable.

Economic activities never exist in a cultural
vacuum; they entail social organization, as well
as tools and a body of technical knowledge. They
require certain kinds of leadership, organization,
and investment. They may also be integrated,
to a greater or lesser degree, with supporting
belief systems that find expression in art, magic,
and ritual. In North Pacific cultures the linkage
between subsistence practices and religious ide¬
ology is particularly strong and is manifested in
communal hunting ceremonies, magical and rit¬
ual practices connected with hunting, and in the
artistry of hunting implements and other man¬
ufactured objects. Few culture areas of the world
exhibit so close a relationship between the
functional and symbolic attributes of material
objects.

Magic and artistry are especially evident in
the sea mammal hunting technology of the
Alaskan Eskimo, Aleuts, and Northwest Coast
Indians. Like all North Pacific groups, these
peoples believed that hunting success was de¬
termined by the willingness of the animal spirits
to make themselves available to the hunter,

151

rather than by luck or hunting prowess. Clean
and new clothing, the magic power of hunting
hats, amulets, and face charm plaques, and the
beauty of carefully crafted hunting weapons all
served to please and attract the spirits of game
animals. Eskimo weapons were sometimes given
additional power by being ornamented with the
images of predatory animals or beasts, which
served the hunter as helping spirits. Bering Sea
Eskimo harpoons carried images of wolflike beasts
on their socketpieces, and harpoon heads were
frequently ornamented with designs of preda¬
tory birds like cormorants, gulls, and hawks.
Harpoon lines and floats were decorated with
ivory rattles that were inset with dark wood or
baleen plugs and sprigs of seal hair, float plugs
carried spirit face images, and line attachers

were carved with complex zoomorphic images.
In short, the serious sea mammal hunter's equip¬
ment was elegantly designed and beautifully
maintained as a sign of respect to his prey.
These values, as much as functional design,
were fundamental to a hunter's success. These
practices had ancient origins among early cul¬
tures of the North Pacific and are especially
noted in the hunting technology and art of the
Old Bering Sea culture.

The following description of maritime sub¬
sistence systems of the North Pacific Rim por¬
trays ways of life at the time of the first contacts

Fishing

Fish .were everywhere important if not preemi¬
nent in terms of caloric contribution to the diet,
especially in the southern area of our region—
Kamchatka, the Aleutians, the southern coast of
Alaska, and British Columbia — where fish re¬
sources were most abundant. Methods and fish¬
ing equipment used in different areas showed
relatively minor technical variation but varied in
importance according to ecological conditions
and the local abundance of various species.

The limited nature and, in some cases, com¬
plete lack of rites and ceremonies associated
with fishing enterprises is a curious feature of
the northernmost Pacific Rim cultures. For in¬
stance, among the Bering Sea and North Alaskan
Eskimo, little ceremonial or ritual attention was
given to fish, even in areas where fish provided
the bulk of the diet. Masks representing fish

with Western civilization. However, the millen¬
nia that passed before the arrival of Europeans
should not be seen as a time of stasis, for it is
clear that the aboriginal period saw continual
change in artifact design, development of new
hunting methods, and flux in the strength and
degree of isolation of regional traditions. Al¬
though the opening of Alaska and Siberia to new
raw materials (metal, glass, cloth) and manufac¬
tured implements (nets, rifles, and harpoon guns)
changed native cultures, diversified patterns of
traditional fishing, sealing, and whaling continue
in the late 20th century.

were rare, whereas those of birds and mammals
were common. Perhaps the spiritual elements
of sea mammal hunting were more emphasized
because it was usually a more dangerous activity
than fishing, and because the hunter engaged
individual, observable animals rather than an
invisible and undifferentiated mass of organisms.
Rituals and the invoking of spirit helpers did
characterize halibut fishing, but these fish were
taken at sea in open boats or kayaks and are
large, powerful, and dangerous. Among various
Northwest Coast groups the First Salmon cere¬
mony was an important annual renewal rite,
reflecting the overriding economic importance
of salmon in that region. In this case, however,
it was an individual (the first salmon caught)
that represented the mass of other fish.

181. Hunting Magic
Aglegmiut Eskimo: NMNH 127766,
127777 (socket piece, point). Aleut:
MAE 2868-83 (hat)

To insure hunting success, weapons
were decorated with images of pow¬
erful predators, and special clothing
was worn. This elegant ritual hunting
hat shows killer whales attacking
large whales and kayak hunters sur¬
rounding a sea otter, whose ivory im¬
age adorns the peak of the hat.

182. Guardian of the Nets
Koryak: AMNH 70-2752
Dressed in magically powerful grass,
anthropomorphic amulets (kamak-lo)
guarded Koryak nets from the incan¬
tations of wicked people and guaran¬
teed a large catch. Periodically these
amulets were ritually fed with the
blood and blubber of sea mammals.

152

183. Sculpin Headdress
Tlingit? : NMNH 20573
Living creatures were honored in
ceremonial life as well as in equip¬
ment and clothing used for hunting.
When fish or swimming sea mam¬
mals were represented in dramatic
reenactments of Tlingit myths they
often took the form of "back masks,"
worn by crouching dancers. This
spectacular mask has the dorsal
ridge, fins, and spines of the sculpin
joined to a body of muslin stuffed
with grass. The sculpin's characteris¬
tic features are overlaid with copper,
a metal of high value and prestige.
Eyes are of iron, and an inlay (prob¬
ably copper) once shone in the nos¬
trils. Painting in black, trade Vermil¬
lion, and blue (probably drived from
the iron silicate mineral, celadonite)
elaborates the carving.

Net and Weir Fishing

Some fishing methods were designed for mass
harvesting, especially of salmon and other hsh
that spawn in rivers. Salmon were the most
important hsh resource of the North Pacihc and
were taken by all groups as far north as Bering
Strait. Not only were salmon a major summer
food but they were also preserved for fall and
winter use and provided the economic basis for
fall and winter festival life. Five species were
available, each of which had different charac¬
teristics in terms of the timing of runs, preserv-
ability, taste, and nutritional value. In mid-June,
when the hrst salmon runs begin, they were
caught by hshermen wearing waterproof cloth¬
ing who pulled seines and gill nets through the
shallows. The Tlingit and Pacihc Eskimo took
salmon concentrated at V-shaped river weirs
using harpoons with small barbed or toggling
heads, and the Tlingit also used funnel-shaped
basket traps. In the Eskimo region, salmon were
netted or taken with three-pronged leisters after
being channeled into ponds using stone or wooden
weirs. Salmon hshing ended in September or
October with the conclusion of the spawning
runs.

Herring were also an extremely important
resource for many North Pacihc peoples. Herring
were caught in early summer when they swarmed
into shallow shore waters, attaching their spawn
to seaweed and rocks. In some areas spawn was
so thick that it could be gathered with pole-
mounted rakes set with dozens of bone splinter
teeth, and with cedar-bark seines. Gill nets were
also widely used in the streams and along shore
for herring, sea-run trout, and other hsh.

Halibut Fishing

Open-water hshing from watercraft was impor¬
tant for the Northwest Coast Indians, Pacihc
Eskimo, and eastern Aleuts. Of all the various
hshing techniques, halibut hshing was the most
highly developed and required the greatest ritual
attention. These huge bottom-feeding creatures
were caught at depths down to 1 50 fathoms and
attained weights up to 600 pounds, although
most hsh caught were in the 20-to- 100-pound
range. Ens. A. P. Niblack, who observed Tlingit
halibut hshing, commented: ”A primitive halibut
hshing outht consists of kelp-lines, wooden boats,
stone sinkers, an anchor line, a wooden club,
and wooden hsh hooks. It is impossible with our
most modern appliances to compete with the
[Tlingit] Indians in halibut hshing. With their
crude implements they meet with the most
surprising success” (Niblack 1890:299).

On the Northwest Coast, halibut hshing was
conducted in dugout canoes from spring to fall

153

using hooks embellished with representations of
mythological creatures. These hooks were baited
with octopus and were anchored by stone sinkers
about two feet off the sea floor. Sections of bull
kelp, knotted together, provided flexible and
nearly unbreakable lines up to 150 fathoms in
length. Bird-shaped floats were attached to the
tops of the lines. When a fish was hooked its
weight pulled the bird float upright, signaling a
catch. The fisherman then gingerly drew the
halibut to the surface and dispatched it with a
blow from a club.

The northern Northwest Coast halibut hook
(fig. 184) was V-shaped and was made of two
pieces of wood, a smaller shank joined to a
thicker body fitted with a bone barb. The thicker
body section was more buoyant and held the
hook in the proper orientation in the water. The
body was carved with representations of helping
spirits: individual or composite groups of birds,
bears, seals, humans, and mythological mon¬
sters. Ingenious inventions, suited exactly for
the behavior and anatomy of halibut, these hooks
were designed so that it was impossible to catch
a halibut larger than a man could haul into his
boat; a larger fish could not get its mouth into
the V opening far enough to become hooked on
the barb.

Line fishing from boats with lures or baited
hooks was also used for smaller fish along the
Northwest Coast, southern Alaska, and in the
Bering Sea. Cod, flounder, herring, sculpin, and
other fish were frequently taken in this manner.

Ice Fishing

In regions where the sea froze in winter, as in
the Okhotsk Sea and the Chukchi and northern
Bering Sea (fig. 185), and in interior lakes and
rivers, lures, baited hooks, and jigs were used.
Ice fishing was often done by old people, women,
and children in late winter and early spring
when food was scarce and hunters were occu¬
pied elsewhere looking for larger prey.

Among the Chukchi and Eskimo, ice fishing
began with the chopping of a hole through the
ice with an antler or ivory chisel or pick. Floating
pieces of ice were then removed with a scoop
or with a baleen strainer. This type of ice fishing
was conducted with short fishing rods 12—18
inches long that doubled as line reels. Eskimo
and Chukchi rods were single pieces of wood
with notched ends that served as line reels when
not in use. Koryak rods were longer and more
elaborate, having pistol-grip handles and ivory
line guides (fig. 185). The line consisted of kelp,
sinew, or, in northern regions, strips of baleen
or bird quill, both of which maintain flexibility
and do not become knotted or brittle when
frozen. The lines were fitted with ivory or stone
weights and small lures. Western Eskimo groups
produced beautiful composite lures of colorful
ground stone and ivory ornamented with orange
crested auklet bill fragments and glass beads
(fig. 186). Sometimes lures were used in com¬
bination with leisters to spear fish that would
not strike the lure itself. In another technique,
known as jigging, fish were attracted to a mov-

184. Ocean Fishing
Henry W. Elliott, 1872: SI-NAA
7119-7, SI neg. 73-10872. Tlingit
hooks (top to bottom): MAE 2539-3;
NMNH-46349, T-717
Although sea mammal hunting en¬
gendered more ritual and artistic
elaboration, halibut fishing ritual was
also highly developed south of the
Bering Sea. Tlingit halibut fishing
was done from wooden dugouts
while Pacific Eskimo and Aleut fisher¬
men used kayaks, as shown in this
painting. Group fishing and special
paddle bracing was needed to kill
and land a large fish.

Many Northwest Coast halibut
hooks were crudely carved, probably
by individual fishermen, like the hook
( center ) depicting a salmon with a
hooked snout, as it appears during
spawning. Others were powerful
works of master carvers, combining
animals and humans in incongruous
composites. The hook at the upper
right is shaped like a canoe and
shows a sea lion-like creature with its
long tongue curved back over his
head, rows of octopus suckers along
its sides, and flippers. In the "canoe"
a fisherman hauls in a halibut, from
under whose tail emerges a human
face. These enigmatic parts cannot be
interpreted, except to say that they
relate to the power the hook was ex¬
pected to exert on the fish.

Equally ingenious hooks were used
to catch black cod. A long slip of
hardwood, usually split from the
branchroot in a partially rotted log,
was steamed and bent into an elon¬
gated hoop, one end of which became
the hook, the other the shank. In use
the ends were spread apart with a
thin stick that dislodged when the
cod took the hook, allowing the ends
to spring closed and set the point. A
brace reinforced the curve of the
hook from the pull of the fish.

154

185. Ice Fishing

Koryak: AMNH neg. 4126, Jesup
Exp.; Koryak: AMNH 70-3314 (upper
rod); Chukchi: MAE-21D
Spring fishing was important along
the Siberian coast and in the Bering
and Chukchi seas. Rods, lures, sink¬
ers, sinew or baleen line, picks, and
scoops comprised the fisherman's kit.
Grip-handled rods with fancy bone
fairleads were used in Kamchatka;
simpler reel-type rods with ivory
sinkers were used by the Chukchi
and Alaskan Eskimo.

<. ■

186. Lures

Western Alaska: NMNH 37413,
37648, 89552, 316851 (top right to
bottom left)

Eskimo fishermen crafted different
types of lures and sinkers for catch¬
ing tomcod, grayling, and other fish.
Spiked bone hooks were for tomcod.
Small composite hooks for the ugly
sculpin were made of beautiful
ground stone and fossil ivory fas¬
tened with quill or gull tendons.
Glass beads and orange auklet bill
sheaths were attached as bait. Gull
wing tendons were used as leaders.

ing, unbaited hook and then snagged with a
rapid upward jerk by the fisherman.

Blackfish, a small, oily fish inhabiting tundra
ponds of the Yukon and Kuskokwim deltas and
similar regions of Chukotka, was an extremely
important source of food and oil for peoples in
arctic coastal lowlands. Caught with small traps
beneath the ice, blackfish were sometimes the
only hedge against starvation — a resource that
could be counted upon when all else failed —
and provided an important source of dogfood
and lamp oil for tundra peoples living away from
the sea.

Fishing on the spring ice was often a pleasant
social occasion. Members of a village ventured
from their dark winter quarters and gathered at
good fishing places to enjoy each other's com¬
pany, basking in the warm sun and waiting for
that delightful surprise — the sudden tug on the
line and the suspenseful haul that followed.

155

187. Canoe Model
Tlingit: MAE 593-53

South of the pack ice and where
wood was plentiful (as it was not in
the Aleutians), dugout canoes were
used. This model illustrates a type of
canoe with overhanging bow and
stem and vertical cutwater that in
the early 19th century superceded
the head canoe (below) and contin¬
ued in use until the end of canoe¬
making in the early 20th century.

188. Northwest Coast Canoe and
Aleut Kayaks

P. Mikhailov, 1827. SRM P29097.
Mikhailov's sketch shows five views
of a northern canoe seen in Sitka in
1827. Paddles and Aleut kayaks are
also shown.

189. War Canoe
Tlingit: MAE 2520-2
The large northern traveling and war
canoe of the late 18th and early 19th
centuries was the "head canoe," with
its broad, square bow fin and raked
stern. Important canoes were named,
and the complex red formline design
of an animal elaborating the bow and
stem relates to the name of this
canoe. A finlike pattern just aft of the
animal's head and a design resem¬
bling a tail fin and joint at the stem
suggest that a sea creature is repre¬
sented.

156

Sea Mammal Hunting

Northwest Coast Canoes

The art of dugout canoe making reached a high state
of development on the Northwest Coast of America,
with more than a dozen distinctly different types of
canoes known during the historic period. Some of
these were confined to very specific areas of the
region, while others had wide distribution.

The classic northern canoe was a graceful craft
with upswept and overhanging bow and stern, elegant
sheer, and a distinctive square cutwater under the
bow. it was made in sizes ranging from tiny one- or
two-person boats to great seagoing traveling canoes
said to be as much as 70 feet in length with a beam
of 10 feet. They were excellent sea boats and were
probably perfected by the Queen Charlotte Haida,
who carried on a brisk trade in canoes.

The most spectacular of the early historic period
canoes was the "head" canoe with its large, roughly
rectangular fin extending from the bow and a similarly
large, but tapered fin at the stern (fig. 189). Head
canoes did not survive the early contact period. Models
and drawings are the only record we have of this
important canoe type.

North of the distribution of red cedar, a small to
moderately large canoe was made of spruce (de
Laguna 1972:337). This "Sitka canoe" (or "spruce
canoe") had the typically northern feature of thin fins
extending from the bow and stern. Closely related to
the spruce canoe in form was the cottonwood canoe
typical of Klukwan and other villages of the rivers (de
Laguna 1972:336). Of all Northwest Coast canoes,
Tlingit cottonwood canoes exemplify the technique
of producing, by steaming and spreading, a vessel
wider than the log from which it was carved.

All of these and other canoes were propelled by
single-bladed paddles, while canoes used in rivers
were commonly driven by poling. Everywhere on the
coast they were sailed before the wind using sails of
matting or thin planks. After European types of fore-
and-aft sails of canvas were introduced in the late
18th century, Indians very successfully sailed their
keelless canoes on points up to a beam reach, close
to a right angle to the wind. Thereafter most canoes
of any size were equipped to step masts. Later in the
contact period many canoes were fitted with rowlocks
and oars.

Bill Holm

Sea mammal hunting was of paramount impor¬
tance to peoples of the North Pacific region. Sea
mammals provided them with their most im¬
portant animal resource, considering the value
of these animals not only as food but also as
providers of oil, skins, ivory, and other products
without which life in this environment could not
have been sustained. The importance of this
activity is seen in the development of sophisti¬
cated hunting equipment and also of costumes,
ornament, and ritual, which, taken as a complex,
is perhaps the most striking and elaborated
feature of North Pacific maritime societies.

Techniques for hunting North Pacific sea mam¬
mals — including pinnipeds (seals, sea lions, and
walrus), sea otters, and small and large whales —
were extremely varied but conformed to two
basic systems: harpooning with float or drag
gear, and the use of poisoned projectiles. The
latter method was used only for large whales
and was practiced exclusively by Itelmen, Aleut,
and Pacific Eskimo hunters; variations on the
former were used for all sea mammals from sea
otters to huge whales. The following discussion
treats the hunting of the small- and medium-
size sea mammals separately from large whale
hunting, which, despite its similar technology
and principles, was attended by a separate

191. Sea Mammal Magic
Koniag Eskimo?: MAE 571-37
The complex designs painted on this
sealskin float are part of the elabo¬
rate ritual surrounding marine mam¬
mal hunting.

190. Steering Paddle
Haida: NMNH 73544

Long, broad-bladed paddles were
used by the steersman of large trav¬
eling canoes. Crew paddles were
shorter and more pointed. Designs on
paddles related to the design on the
canoe, this one being an octopus with
long, sucker-lined tentacles. The pad¬
dle is made of tough yellow cedar.

157

ceremonial complex and had different implica¬
tions for social and economic organization.

Seasonal availability of the smaller sea mam¬
mals varied, but the most important hunt was
carried on during spring and summer when the
weather was calm and the animals had a heavy
layer of fat and when their skins and pelts were
in prime condition.

Differences in equipment and hunting tech¬
niques were correlated with differing habits and
environments of the animals. In the north, hunt¬
ing from the ice edge or at breathing holes was
more important than open-water hunting from
boats, whereas in the southern Bering Sea and
in Pacific waters most hunting was done from
boats. Some techniques required cooperative
hunting parties, either in large boats or in fleets
of kayaks, while others were conducted by single
hunters, the specific method being determined
by the numbers, size, aggressiveness, and alert¬
ness of the prey.

Most important, the pinnipeds and small whales
supplied the hunter's family (and dogs) with
food. But they also provided a number of other
products. Sea mammal blubber, in addition to
being a dietary staple, was rendered into oil for
use in lamps for heat and light; skins were used
for clothing, thongs, and boat covers; and ivory
teeth and tusks were used in a variety of func¬
tional and decorative industries and were im¬
portant trade items. Of all the sea mammals,
the sea otter was the least used in prehistoric
times but was the dominant quarry during the
Russian period because of its importance in the
fur trade.

Open Water and Ice Edge Hunting of Seals,
Walrus, and Sea Otters

Weapons used in the hunting of sea mammals
in the Arctic and Subarctic exhibited a great
deal of technical variation. They may be classi¬
fied into arrows, darts, harpoons, and lances on
the basis of shaft diameter and mode of propul¬
sion. Arrows, shot from bows, are short with
thin shafts; darts are longer but still lightweight
weapons that may be hand-cast but are usually
propelled with throwing boards; harpoons have
longer and heavier shafts and may be thrown
or used as thrusting weapons; lances (or spears)
are variable in length with heavy shafts, and
may also be thrown or thrust. Lances were used
primarily to administer killing wounds to animals
that had already been secured with darts or
harpoons. A basic distinction that cuts across
these categories is whether the point or head of
the weapon is detachable or nondetachable.
Darts and harpoons were the most important
weapons for hunting sea mammals in open water

158

192. Kayak Models

Koryak: AMNH 70-3278; Norton

Sound Eskimo: NMNH 260384;

Aleut: MAE 2442-3, 4104-38
(Clockwise from upper left)
Skin-covered boats known as kayaks
and umiaks (the larger open-deck
form) were used throughout the
North Pacific and Bering Sea region.
Constructed of light wood frames and
covered with sea mammal skin, kay¬
aks were fast and seaworthy, and
were preferred over wood boats for
use in icy waters. The art of kayak
building was rudimentary among the
Koryak (upper left) and most devel¬
oped among the Alaskan Aleut (lower
two) and Pacific Eskimo. Norton
Sound kayaks (upper right) were
transported to the ice edge on small
sleds.

159

and always had detachable points that remained
in the body of the animal after impact. Dart and
harpoon heads conformed to two basic designs
of different origin and different utility according
to ice conditions.

The barbed, or male, harpoon head was the
most ancient form, dating back to paleolithic
times. It consisted of a bone, antler, or ivory
point with a row of barbs along one or both
sides, and a base that had a hole or flange to
which a line was tied (fig. 195). The butt end of
the head fit into a socket at the front end of the
weapon shaft. It detached and remained in the
animal after impact, while the shaft floated free.
The other end of the line remained attached to
the shaft, boat, or some type of float.

The barbed form was the dominant type used
throughout the North Pacific south of the sea-
ice zone. In ice-infested waters, this type was
replaced by the Eskimo, or toggling, harpoon
head (fig. 195), a female-socketed implement
that was designed to be implanted beneath the
skin and blubber with the aid of a slender
foreshaft connecting the head to the shaft. The
foreshaft allowed the toggling head to penetrate
deeply into the animal so that when the shaft
detached, the head twisted sideways beneath
the animal's skin and could not be pulled out.
The worldwide distribution of these two types,
barbed forms occurring along open-water coasts
and toggling forms in regions of seasonal ice
cover, clearly demonstrates the superior effi¬
ciency of the toggling form for use in icy regions
where breakage, either accidental or purposeful,
of the protruding butt element against ice per¬
mitted the animal's escape. Such losses could
be substantially reduced, and holding power
increased, by use of the toggling principle.

Whether using a barbed or toggle-headed dart
or harpoon, the basic hunting method was sim¬
ilar. Typically, the hunter silently approached
the seal in his skin-covered kayak and when
within range hurled his weapon. The animal was
restrained by the drag created by a float or float
board attached to the end of the harpoon line.
Alternatively, the line would be attached to the
dart or harpoon shaft, which dragged behind
and impeded the animal's escape. The actual
killing of the harpooned animal was done with
a lance or club. Specially designed repeating

194. Throwing Darts

Aleut: NMNH 175825; Bering Sea
Eskimo: NMNH 43746, 33956 (top to
bottom)

Darts, a kind of heavy-duty arrow,
were launched with throwing boards
at small to medium sized sea mam¬
mals. Aleut sea otter darts (top) were
shorter and lighter than Bering Sea
seal darts ( bottom ) because the
quarry was smaller, but they worked
the same way. When the animal was
struck, the shaft disengaged and
dragged sideways behind the animal,
hindering its escape. Bird darts (mid¬
dle) with multiple prongs were also
launched with throwing boards.

193. Throwing Boards

P. Mikhailov, SRM P29098; Bering
Sea Eskimo: MAE 593-67; Aleut:
568-1; Koniag Eskimo: 4087-10,
2888-30 (top to bottom)

Throwing boards added distance and
power when hunting seals, sea ot¬
ters, and whales with darts. Like kay¬
aks, styles varied regionally. Known
historically from Bering Strait to
Southeast Alaska (fig. 388), they had
almost disappeared in Siberia before
the historic period. Beaded designs
(top), black and red paint, and sea
otter teeth and sculptural figures
(lower two ) were favored by Bering
Sea Eskimo, Aleut, and Koniag hunt¬
ers.

160

195. Harpoon Technology

MAE 656-42, 5031-1, 434-17/2,
NMNH 89761, 37571, 168625 (left to
right)

Two types of harpoon technology are
used in the North Pacific. The sim¬
plest, distributed mostly in ice-free
waters, is the nontoggling or 'male'
harpoon point that holds an animal
by its barbs. The second and more
complex form is the toggling harpoon
point, historically a later development
associated with sea mammal hunting
in arctic waters. Toggling beneath
the skin and blubber where it cannot
be broken off by ice, it holds heavier
quarry like walrus and whales. The
toggling forms shown here are from
the Orochi, Koryak, Chukchi, and the
North Alaskan, Kuskokwim, and Bris¬
tol Bay Eskimo.

196. Lances

NMNH 153731, 36058, 382259 (top
to bottom)

When an animal was exhaused by
struggling against the harpoon, it
was approached and killed with a
lance. Two types of lance are used in
western Alaska, the northern fixed
point lance (above, with chert blade)
that could only be used from an um¬
iak, and, south of Bering Strait, the
repeating lance. The latter could be
rearmed for multiple thrusts.

lances (fig. 196), with successively inserted
detachable heads, were employed by Bering Sea
Eskimo in killing harpooned white whales (be¬
luga). This technique permitted a large number
of killing thrusts to be made in a short time,
because the hunter did not have to struggle to
withdraw the lance after each thrust.

The size of the prey was a determining factor
in selecting the right weapon. Light darts with
toggling or barbed heads propelled with throw¬
ing boards were used for small seals (fig. 193),
while larger seals and sea lions required heavier
equipment. Some darts were especially designed
for taking seabirds on the surface of the water
(fig. 194). For hunting sea otters, which were
hard to approach, very light darts propelled with

throwing boards and "harpoon" arrows (arrows
with detachable barbed or toggling heads) were
used (fig. 76). The use of light equipment per¬
mitted Pacific Eskimo and Aleuts to carry more
weapons and to launch them from great dis¬
tances, a technique that permitted a single boat
to capture many animals at one time. In addition,
the surround technique, in which fleets of kayaks
encircled whole groups of sea otters, corralling
them in the center until the hunters had ex¬
pended all their weapons, was highly effective
for hunting these gregarious animals.

The use of harpoon arrows required two-man
kayaks in which the stern paddler stabilized the
boat while the bowman shot. This method, used
by the Pacific Eskimo, may have been adopted

v.-V ' .y’yy';

... - -. . v ?

161

from Northwest Coast Indians. Tlingit hunters,
who hunted from more stable dugout boats,
used the bow for hunting small sea mammals
and large barbed harpoons for hunting larger
game.

In May and June, seals and beluga whales
approached the shore to feed on fish and often
entered estuaries and rivers. In such situations,
groups of hunters drove them into shallow water,
where they were speared. In some cases, hunt¬
ers erected scaffolds for shoreside hunting or
simply hid among the rocks at good hunting
spots, wearing seal helmet disguises.

Walrus, a pagophilous or ice-loving creature,
was hunted throughout its distribution from the
southern Bering Sea into the Arctic Ocean with
heavy harpoon equipment and spears. Because
walrus tend to occur in large herds and fre¬
quently defend themselves, they were usually
hunted from open skin boats carrying four to
eight hunters. Walrus harpoons had long fore¬
shafts, permitting the harpoon head to be forced
deeply into the animal, and were attached to
long lines made from sealskin thong and to
sealskin floats, often richly decorated with or¬
naments and rattles. The successful walrus hunter
required strength, courage, and skill, and he had
to have the means to maintain his equipment,
crew, and boat. For these reasons, walrus hunt¬
ing had greater social ramifications than sea
otter or seal hunting. Walrus were also hunted
with the aid of a baleen clapper, which was
slapped on the water to drive the walrus to
shore, where they were speared by waiting
hunters. Shore hunting also occurred at rookeries
and haul-out places by men using harpoons and
lances.

By the end of the 19th century, many of the
traditional methods of sea mammal hunting had
disappeared. However, firearms did not replace
harpoons, which remained as auxiliary weapons.
Gaining the advantage of distance, hunters shot
to wound rather than kill, and then hurried to
attach harpoons to the animal before it was killed
with the rifle. In this way the sinking and loss
of the dead animal was prevented.

Winter Sealing

In early winter and in spring seals were caught
in large mesh nets made of strips of seal-hide
thong stretched beneath the ice. Lying nearby,
the hunter would scratch the surface of the ice
with a scratcher made in the shape of a seal's
flipper, to which seal claws were attached. Seals,
sociable and curious animals, were attracted by
the sound and became enmeshed. At this time
of year hunters also stalked basking seals with
harpoons. Wearing white intestine clothing, the

hunter approached on his belly, sometimes be¬
hind a white shield. Keeping a sharp watch, the
hunter crawled forward while the seal napped,
and "froze'' when it woke every few minutes to
check for danger. The hunt climaxed with the
hunter's final dash and throw; he had only a
single chance. At a time of food scarcity, survival
depended upon success, and a single error had
grave consequences for hunter and family.

Winter and spring were also the time for
sealing at the breathing holes that some seal
species keep open through the sea ice. Waiting
patiently over the breathing hole, sometimes for
hours, required concentration and stamina
equivalent to that required to stalk basking seals.
A single sound could alert the approaching seal.
Use of a harpoon with a long foreshaft enabled
the hunter to thrust his weapon deeply into the
seal, attempting to kill it. If not, the hunter faced
an unpleasant predicament, trying to hold a
harpoon line with several hundred pounds of
fighting seal in one hand while attempting to
dispatch it with a spear through a small hole in
the ice with the other.

Breathing-hole sealing was considered un¬
pleasant work and was practiced only under
conditions of scarcity. The technique could only
be used in areas of firm ice cover, and for this
reason was rarely practiced in the southern sea
ice regions. In open-water regions winter sea
mammal hunting was conducted with nets and
harpoons that had floats attached to their shafts.

197. Hunting on the Ice
NMNH 63514, 63876; MAE 668-2;

SI 38754; FM 53453
Special equipment was developed by
Eskimos living in the icy regions of
Bering Strait. Among these were
heavy ivory seal net weights; ice
scratchers to calm the nerves of sus¬
picious seals being stalked by hunt¬
ers over the ice; drag handles and
small sleds to haul animals home;
and ice creepers to give one's boots
traction. The sled below is made
from oak scavenged from wrecked
whaling ships.

198. "Wife" and "Husband" Charms
Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 340373a
Face charms were attached inside the
cockpits of some Eskimo kayaks to
protect the hunter from harmful spir¬
its. Similar to charms representing
"the wife" (frown) and "the hus¬
band" (smile) used for protecting the
home, this pair protected the ocean
traveler.

199. Walrus and Sealing Harpoons
NMNH 45475, 153727
Walrus harpoons were heavier than
sealing harpoons and had larger
heads. Seal hide was used as line. Ice
picks at the butt end balanced the
shaft and were used for testing ice
thickness.

162

Hunting Ritual

Practices to insure the success of the hunt, and
to mollify the spirit of the animal caught, were
widespread in the North Pacific. Hunters carried
amulets to protect them from evil spirits and
charms to make their presence acceptable to
the prey. Ivory sea otters were attached inside
the kayaks of Bristol Bay and Aleutian Island
hunters; Bering Sea Eskimo carried smiling and
frowning male-female face plaques lashed inside
their kayak cockpits; and other types of charms
and fetishes were used by other groups. In
addition to boat charms, hunters carried personal
charms and amulets made of ivory, feathers,
bird beaks, and pieces of skin in bags at their
belts or sewn into their clothing.

Sea mammal hunting was supported by a
wide variety of ritual and ceremonial activity
beyond the practice of the hunt itself. Boat
manufacture was accompanied by the perform¬
ance of rituals intended to protect the hunter,
and the annual calendar of ceremonial life in¬
cluded harvest festivals honoring the spirits of
sea mammals upon which the community de¬
pended. During these festivals hunters reen¬
acted symbolic hunts and returned the bones,
bladders, or other parts of the animals captured
to the sea as a gesture of respect meant to
replenish the supply of game.

Throughout the North Pacific region, hunters
had strict procedures that governed the own¬
ership and sharing of sea mammal game, begin¬
ning with correct attribution of hunter and prey.
Hunting marks on harpoons insured that the
identity of the hunter who harpooned the game
was known. The primary division of the meat
and skin and the symbolic spirit of the animal
were awarded to the hunter making the first
firm strike. Rights to portions of the catch de¬
pended on the size of the animal and the role
of the secondary hunters. The larger the animal,
the more elaborate the sharing ritual. For large
animals such as walrus and bearded seals caught
from umiaks, meat was shared evenly among
the members of the boat crew and those present
at the division. Skins went to the owner of the
boat, as did the head and tusks when a walrus
was caught.

Whaling

Aboriginal whaling in the North Pacific, Bering
Sea, and Chukchi Sea reached a high degree of
development long before the arrival of Europe¬
ans in this region. In fact, techniques used by
Siberian and Alaskan whalers of the Punuk and
Thule cultures in the 7th through 13th centuries
were the most advanced in the world at that
time. It was not until Europeans learned how to
use toggling harpoons by contacts with Eskimos
in the Eastern Arctic in the 17th century that
this gap closed and European whalers began to
reap huge gains by adopting this efficient tech¬
nology. Only then did the combination of new
hunting technology and seagoing vessels allow
European whalers to extend their reach into
North Atlantic waters and, later, into the Pacific.

The exact origin of whaling among North
Pacific Rim peoples remains unknown, but in
the Bering Strait the first large whaling harpoons
occur in 2,000-year-old archeological sites of the
Old Bering Sea culture. Prior to this, North Pacific
peoples probably utilized whale products like
bone, teeth, blubber, and meat by scavenging
the carcasses of dead whales. Although the
beginnings of whaling seem indicated in Old
Bering Sea times, several centuries elapsed
before whaling began to play a dominant role
in the life of Punuk culture (a.d. 600—1200) and
in subsequent cultural phases of the Bering Sea
and North American Arctic. Most of what we
know about the origins of whaling comes from
these arctic regions. At present, relatively little
is known archeologically about whale hunting
by the peoples of northeastern Asia, southern
Alaska, and the Northwest Coast. As discussed
below, the whaling techniques of the Kurile
Island Ainu, Itelmen, Aleut, and Pacific Eskimo
were based on the use of poisoned darts or
arrows and thus differed radically from the
harpoon and float whaling practiced in the Bering
Sea and southern Northwest Coast. Poison whal¬
ing is of uncertain age (Heizer 1943).

A significant feature of the distribution of
North Pacific Rim whaling in the historical period
is that it was not uniform but rather occurred in
some regions and not in others. This resulted,
in part, from variations in the migratory patterns
of the several species of whales most important
in native subsistence: the gray, bowhead, fin,
and humpback whales (fig. 207).

Bowhead and gray whales were the focus of
Bering Sea and Chukchi Sea umiak whaling,
because they are slow swimming and relatively
docile, making approach by paddling or sailing
boat crews possible. Gray whales winter in
lagoons off Baja California and Mexico and travel
north along the coast of western North America

163

201. Bering Sea Hunting Hats

Bering Sea Eskimo: MAE 593-51. SI
neg. 3846, E.W. Nelson, ca. 1880
This Norton Sound hunter wears a
visor similar to the bentwood hat at
the left, probably collected at Norton
Sound in 1843. The back of the hat
has an old-squaw feather "tail" and
an ivory pendant; the sides have
ivory "wings" (volutes) carved in
openwork bird head designs; its brim
ornaments depict the gull, walrus,
and seal. Wearing this hat, the
hunter became birdlike; his harpoon
was also decorated with bird motifs
(figs. 139, 195).

200. Seal and Pike Spirit Hats

Koniag Eskimo: MAE 2888-89 (left)
Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 33136
This Koniag decoy helmet (left) was
worn by a hunter as a seal hunting
disguise; the Bering Sea Eskimo vi¬
sor, also used for seal hunting, was
carved as a toothed, pike-faced spirit
that had different night (dark, with
red eye) and day (white, with amber
eye) personas. The animal-spirit basis
of these hats is more than 2,500
years old in the Bering Sea (fig. 136;
Fitzhugh 1984:35). Animal reference
is noted to varying degrees in ethno¬
graphic hats in Yupik Eskimo and
Aleut cultures (Ivanov 1930; Black, in
press).

202. Katmai Hunting Hat

Koniag Eskimo?: NMNH 90444
This open-crown hat was influenced
by three cultural traditions. The
white color is a Bering Sea Eskimo
(Aglegmiut) trait; the beaded decor,
Koniag (fig. 406); and the woven
grass and yarn pendants, Aleut. Its
animal features include pointed ivory
ears, cresentic eyes, ivory wing vol¬
utes, and on its brim, painted mouth
and nostrils. The beads are Venetian,
Bohemian, and Chinese, obtained
from Russian and American traders.

164

203. Painted Visor
Aleut: MAE 4104-5
This late visor, decorated with spirals
and leaf-shape designs, has lost all
semblance of animalness. Its ivory
crest ornament, a hunter wearing a
long visor and seated in Aleut pad-

204. Painted Hunting Hat
Aleut: MAE 2868-82
Elegant bentwood helmets were worn
by high-ranking Aleut men in the
early 19th century. This superb ex¬
ample is decorated with an ivory
bird, a sea otter backplate, and tiny
side volutes. Each sea lion whisker
represented a successful catch. They
are decorated with large Chinese
trade beads. The design is so conven¬
tionalized that its animal features are
barely recognizable.

205. Bentwood Hunting Hat
Bering Sea Eskimo: MAE 3235-14
This bentwood hat is decorated with
ivory strip ornaments depicting "col¬
lared'' cormorants. The central carv¬
ing of a seal spirit has a wolflike
head, glass beads for eyes, joint-
marks (nucleated circles), and smiling
"husband" and frowning "wife"
spirit faces (fig. 198).

206. Spruce-Root Hunting Hat

Chugach or Koniag: MAE 539-1
In place of bentwood hats and visors,
some Pacific Eskimos wore Tlingit-
style spruce-root hats for hunting sea
mammals. This wide, shallow hat
was a common early 1 9th-century
style. The painted design, featuring
an animal eye, is derived from Tlingit
art.

165

in the spring. Their route takes them through
Unimak Pass at the eastern end of the Aleutian
chain and into the rich feeding grounds of the
Bering and Chukchi seas. With the advance of
summer they turn south, following the shores
of Chukotka into the Pacific. Bowhead whales
are more oceanic and were not hunted except
in the narrow leads through the sea ice that
they follow north, and which bring them close
to shore at points of land and offshore islands.
Like the grays, bowheads followed the ice leads
north into Bering Strait and the Arctic Ocean
until their progress was blocked by ice, at which
point they turned south and followed the Sibe¬
rian coast to the Pacific.

Migrating gray and humpback whales were
hunted on the Northwest Coast, but only by the
Nootka of Vancouver Island and the Makah,
Quileute, and Quinault of the Olympic Peninsula.
The absence of whaling in historic times by more
northerly groups of Northwest Coast Indians
was a cultural phenomenon and not related to
lack of available prey. Pacific Eskimo and Aleut
whaling was undertaken in open water from
kayaks and focused primarily on humpbacks and
fin whales. Fin whales are concentrated during
summer in the Gulf of Alaska and along the
Aleutians, while humpbacks range farther north
but stay in open water south of the pack ice;
neither species was therefore likely to be taken
by Bering Sea whale hunters. Whaling was not
reported in the western Aleutians by the earliest
Russian observers, possibly because migration
patterns concentrate whale populations close to
the Alaskan mainland. The Pacific Eskimo and
Aleut whaling method was apparently not suited
for the taking of gray whales.

Whaling was important for a variety of reasons
but primarily for the immense food value of
these huge creatures. A successful hunt pro¬
duced mountains of meat that could be dried
and stored for future use during leaner seasons,
and it also insured a festive ceremonial season.
Dogs as well as people shared in this wealth.
Important as meat was, however, whale blubber
and oil were perhaps of even greater economic
importance.

Umiak Whaling in Arctic Regions

The onset of European whaling in the late 19th
century resulted in decimation of the stocks of
large whales hunted in the Bering Strait before
documentation was gathered on the practice of
aboriginal whaling by Siberian natives. That this
activity was widespread and exceptionally pro¬
ductive is evident from the oral traditions of the
Koryak, Chukchi, and Siberian Eskimo, and from

166

207. Spring-Summer Ranges of
Whale Species in the North Pacific,
Bering, and Chukchi Seas

The whale species shown here — bow-
head (Balaena mysticus), gray (Es-
chrichtius robustus), fin ( Balaenop -
tera physalus), humpback ( Megaptera
novaeangliae) , and beluga ( Delphi -
napterus leucas ) — were the principle
species hunted by Siberian and Alas¬
kan native whalers. Bowheads are
still hunted today by Eskimos on St.
Lawrence Island and along Alaska's
northern coast. Both traditional hunt¬
ing methods and the relative impor¬
tance of different whale species var¬
ied greatly between different groups
of coastal hunters.

208. The Umialik'. North Alaskan Es¬
kimo Whale Boat Captain
NMNH 153734 (parka), 280111
(pants), 203720 (boots), 37663
(labret); FM 53423 (whale plaque)
The umialik — captain and owner of a
North Alaskan Eskimo whaling
boat — stands ready, ritually prepared
for the difficult and dangerous task of
leading his crew in the capture of a
bowhead whale that may weigh 75
tons or more. The raven skin he
wears is a powerful amulet and
badge of office; the soot marks on his
face are a tally of previous kills; and
the whale charm plaque he holds will
be hung in the bow of the umiak to
magically compel whales to draw
near. The umialik is dressed in a
hooded reindeer parka with gores
representing walrus tusks, water¬
proof sealskin pants and boots, and a
single labret with a large blue
Chinese bead.

the many archeological sites found along the
coast of Chukotka, which contain large amounts
of whalebone. Skulls, jaws, and ribs of bowhead
and gray whales had been used at these sites
for construction of houses and elevated storage
racks and for ritual purposes. Some of the larger
Siberian sites, such as Whale Alley (Arutiunov
et al. 1982; Chlenov and Krupnik 1984), contain
thousands of whalebones, many of which still
stand like sentinels over the landscape, testi¬
mony to the hunting success of ancient hunters
and to the role of whales in their ceremonial
observances.

Aboriginal whaling along the northwest coast
of Alaska has been studied more extensively
(Spencer 1959). Here, whaling began with the
opening of spring leads near the major capes,
such as at Wales, Point Hope, and Point Barrow.
For the North Alaskan Eskimos an annual period

of renewal began in early March, when umiaks
received new covers, people made new clothing,
and whaling implements, lines, and floats were
refurbished. Attention to whaling magic, sexual
abstinence, and solemnity marked these prep¬
arations, with the umialiks — the whaling cap¬
tains — assuming almost priestly roles, oversee¬
ing all community activities in advance of the
hunt, including rituals intended to greet the
oncoming whales and the business of seeing
that each crew was well taken care of and
prepared. Whaling crews were close-knit groups
of kinsmen that functioned as cooperative social
and economic units throughout the year under
the leadership of the umialik.

As the time for the appearance of the whales
neared, umiaks and whaling gear, including
ritual equipment, were moved out to the ice
leads by dogsled, and hunting camps were

167

established. Here the hunters remained, some¬
times for days or even weeks, their gear main¬
tained in ready condition, always poised for an
instantaneous launch should the lookout report
signs of an approaching whale. The slightest
sound or deviation from prescribed ritual was
thought sufficient to spoil the hunt. Meanwhile,
the women and children, who were forbidden
to be present on the ice, had to obey strict rules
of behavior, remaining silent and not engaging
in otherwise routine activities, such as sewing.
The umialik's wife was especially important in
her role representing the whale during the hunt;
she had to remain docile to insure the whale's
similar behavior, and her dignified silence in¬
duced the whale to come willingly to the hunters.

When a whale was sighted, the whaling crew,
composed of 7 to 10 men, ran the umiak into
the water, made their approach, and struck. If
more than one umiak crew was present each
vied for the honor of the first strike, as this

209. Ceremony and Magic: The
North Alaskan Eskimo Whale Cult
North Alaskan Eskimo: NMNH 89817
(left); FM 53423

To summon the village to feast on
whale meat in the karigi and to cele¬
brate the end of the whaling season,
whalers danced house to house wear¬
ing masks and breast gorgets (col¬
lected as a matched set, left). Pride
and status are signified by the
"whaleman's mark" — the black band
across the eyes of the mask, here
complemented by lip and chin daubs.
Painted on the gorget are umiaks,
whales, bears, and (beneath the
mask, in red) a giant grasping a
whale in each hand (cf. fig. 444). A
plaque for suspension in the umiak's
bow (right) charmed whales to the
boat, its magic aided by a quartz
crystal inset on the obverse side.

guaranteed both prestige and the choicest share
of the distribution. Umiaks making secondary
strikes were also important in securing the catch
and received shares commensurate with the
order of their strike. Meanwhile the whale sounded
and struggled against the lines and floats, later
to be subdued and lanced. It was then towed to
the ice edge where the umialik's wife, dressed
in finery, greeted it ceremonially with songs and
gave it a drink of fresh water. The whale was
then hauled up on the ice or, if too large, was
butchered into segments for hauling out. Crews
and villages gathered for shares in the division
of meat, blubber, baleen, and other products.
The head and the largest share of meat and
blubber went to the umialik who first struck the
whale, with secondary shares for his crew. Other
crews received appropriate shares, and from
these fixed portions the kill was shared with
other members of the community. A successful
hunt meant food for an entire community for
several months and was often followed by cer¬
emony and feasting, to which neighboring vil¬
lages would be invited.

210. Koryak and Eskimo Whaling
Koryak: AMNH 70-3240, 70-2737;
North Alaskan Eskimo: NMNH
89418, 398238

The harpoon head and anthropo¬
morphic bow line guide (left), which
was also a charm called the "Man¬
ager of the Boat," were used in Ko¬
ryak whaling umiaks. The Eskimo
harpoon rest was also magic, with its
whaletails and carved whale prongs.
An "X" marks the whale's first verte¬
bra, the location of its soul.

211. Line Weight and Ivory Blade
Container

North Alaskan Eskimo. NMNH
48384, FM 53420

The graphite weight aided in secur¬
ing a line around the flukes of a dead
whale; the box held harpoon blades
symbolically inside the intended prey.
A blue bead marks the first vertebra.

168

212. Ceremonial Baleen Bucket
North Alaskan Eskimo: FM 177368;
UMA Neg. 11730

Buckets made from baleen and orna¬
mented with ivory chains and animal
carvings were displayed in whaling
ceremonies and used to carry food
and water to the whalers on the ice
(Kaplan, Jordan, and Sheehan 1984).

213. LJmialik's Headband
North Alaskan Eskimo: NMNH
209841

The umialik and his wife were focal
points of the ritual complex that sur¬
rounded North Alaskan Eskimo whal¬
ing. Their actions were subject to nu¬
merous taboos and restrictions meant
to avoid offense to the spirit of the
whale. The umialik ritually curated
an assortment of whaling charms that
he inherited or was given by his sha-
manic advisors. These might include
pebbles, teeth, insects, ivory or bal¬
een carvings, and stuffed birds. His
headband, worn on the hunt, was
hung with beads and the teeth of the
mountain sheep.

214. Whaling Charms

North Alaskan Eskimo: NMNH 56703
(top), 381859, 89577
Chipped-stone whaling charms were
made in the shapes of whales, hu¬
mans, bears, birds, seals, and other
creatures. The were kept in charm
boxes, or worn on the clothing and
headbands of the umialik and har-
pooner.

Even though whaling was frequently unsuc¬
cessful, hunters would often take walrus and
seals that were discovered during their vigil,
sharing ivory, meat, and skin as described.

Whaling ceremony and ritual practices were
intended to honor the spirits of whales so that
they would allow themselves to be captured.
These practices insured that no offense might
be taken, and in the case of whaling, with its
vast underpinnings in the economic, social, and
technological aspects of life, attention to hunting
magic and associated ceremony was considered
critical to community survival. Failure to catch
a single whale might threaten starvation or
dispersion of the community.

Many ritual items were carried in the umiak
itself or on the persons of the umialik and his
crew. Charm boxes contained amulets prepared
by the umialik or a shaman to insure hunting
success and safety, including such items as
chipped stone effigy whales and pieces of quartz
crystal, a potent vision-inducing material (Ka¬
plan, Jordan, and Sheehan 1984). The umiak
was also fitted with ornamented harpoon rests
and plaques bearing the images of whales,
reminiscent in concept of face plaques and sea
otter charms used in Bering Sea and Aleut
kayaks. Harpoon blades were kept in special
whale-shaped boxes, and ritual wooden fresh¬
water containers were kept at the whaling camp
for use in the greeting ceremonies.

The mass extermination of whales by Amer¬
ican whalers in the late 19th century resulted
in a major decline of native whaling in arctic
regions of Alaska and Siberia. This native hunt
was strictly a coastal hunt, usually conducted
near the shore or at the ice edge, while European
whaling occurred both in coastal and deep-sea
areas. The success of the American whalers in
the open sea drastically reduced the numbers
of whales available to native hunters along shore,
placing them at great disadvantage competi¬
tively in addition to undercutting a focal point
of native life. With the rise of alternative means
of subsistence in the 20th century, reliance on
whales as a food source diminished, but the
importance of whaling in economic and cultural
terms never disappeared. Although Alaskan Na¬
tives no longer observe most of the religious
rituals connected with the hunt, they continue
to share the meat and blubber in traditional
patterns that reaffirm social ties and provide a
strong sense of ethnic identity. Recently, with
the rise of the international whale conservation
movement, some native groups, such as those
in Siberia, have been banned from practicing
aboriginal whaling, but Alaskans, who never
interrupted their whaling tradition, have been
successful in maintaining an annual quota.

169

Northwest Coast Whaling

Vancouver Island and the Olympic Peninsula of
Washington were home to the Nootka, Makah,
Quileute, and Quinault Indians, who were the
great seafaring whalers of the Northwest Coast
(Frachtenberg 1921; Olson 1936; Drucker 1951).
Although whale meat was not their primary
food, whale hunting was the ultimate challenge
for men in these societies, and, as in the Arctic,
whaling took a central cultural role.

Whales were present here from the beginning
of May through the end of June. They were
pursued in dugouts carrying a crew of eight: six
paddlers, a steersman, and a harpooner who
also served as boat captain. Traditionally, the
crew members wore nothing but their basketry
hats, which provided protection from sun and
rain.

The search might last for days. When a whale
was sighted, the crew had to paddle hard but
silently to approach the prey, always from the
left side. The harpooner delivered his blow with
a direct thrust, as a throw would not have
embedded the harpoon head deeply enough to
hold. Accuracy was crucial; the harpoon had to
be placed close behind the whale's left flipper.
After a successful strike the remaining canoes
in the flotilla joined chase, striking with other
harpoons each time the animal surfaced.
Throughout, sacred hunting songs were sung to
help drive the whale toward shore to reduce the
towing distance after the kill. The chase ended
with the whale lying exhausted from exertion
and blood loss. The lead canoe then approached
and the harpooner severed the tail tendons with
a chisellike blade mounted on a long pole, to
prevent the whale from sounding again, and
then delivered a mortal blow with an elk-horn
lance. Floats were then attached to the carcass,
its mouth was tied shut, and the boats began
the hard task of towing the whale to shore.

A complete whaling harpoon consisted of a
shaft, a foreshaft, a harpoon head, a harpoon
line, and three or four inflated sealskin floats.

The shaft was of heavy yew with tapered ends,
measuring 14 to 20 feet in length. Harpoon
heads were made of thick-shelled mussel blades
encased in two elk-horn valves coated with
spruce gum. The harpoon line was of tough
twisted cedar root, 40 fathoms long, with three
or four inflated hair seal floats. In Nootkan
whaling, as in northern Eskimo whaling, the line
and floats were cast free from the boat to be
dragged behind the whale, impeding its escape
while avoiding the dangerous "Nantucket sleigh-
ride" characteristic of the European whaling
tradition.

The origin of Nootka whaling is not known.
However, whaling was important in the life and
culture of Makah people who lived at the Ozette
site south of Cape Flattery. Whaling gear from
this well-preserved archeological site dating to
about a.d. 1400 is nearly identical to that from
the ethnographic period. A rich complex of

215. Whaling Canoe Model
Makah: NMNH 72936
Famed as expert canoe-makers and
seamen, the Makah and their neigh¬
bors were the only Northwest Coast
Indian peoples to hunt whales in his¬
toric times. Whaling was a dangerous
and prestigious pursuit, undertaken
with the aid of ritual observances and
a highly developed technology. The
whaling canoe was fast and seaworthy.
In this model the harpooner stands
with his heavy yew wood harpoon,
fitted with a mussel shell-bladed
head, line, and attached sealskin
floats. His crew is prepared to back
from the whale at the instant the har¬
poon strikes.

whale-related ceremonialism was also recovered
from this remarkable village, destroyed by a
mud slide. The many similarities between this
southern Northwest Coast whaling tradition and
those of Asia and the Arctic have stimulated
speculation, but no certain conclusions have
been reached with archeological data. The most
peculiar similarities are those between Nootka

216. Whaling Float
Makah: NMNH 23387
Inflated sealskin floats attached to the
harpoon line slowed the whale and
shortened his dive. Makah and
Nootka floats were typically painted
with red and black circles around the
four closed holes in the skin, one of
which was fitted with a stoppered
nozzle for inflating. The arrangement
of the colored circles and diamond¬
shaped feather designs was the prop¬
erty mark of the whaler.

170

217. Whale Shrine and Figures
AMNH neg. 13914
Moachat (Nootka), AMNH 16-9930
(figure), AMNH 16-9968 (whale)

In addition to active hunting of
whales. Northwest Coast groups also
sought to magically compel dead drift
whales to wash ashore. Whale ritua¬
lists, who were chiefs or shamans,
built shrines where they carried out
rites for this purpose, and where they
installed human skulls or corpses.

This ancient shrine stood near the
village of Yuquot on Vancouver Is¬
land. Most of the human remains it
once contained had long ago rotted
away and been replaced with wooden
statues. Four carved whale figures
were also part of the shrine furniture.

dugout canoes and Alaskan Eskimo umiaks (Duff
1964, 1981a). These similarities even include
details like the zigzag designs that run the length
of Nootka dugouts beneath the inside gunwales,
a pattern that seems to mimic the lacing of skin
covers in Eskimo umiaks (Holm 1983:92).

Correspondences with Bering Strait whaling
also occurred in Nootka ceremonial practices.
Nootka tradition required the whaler's wife to
lie in the whaler's sleeping place under a new
cedar-bark blanket when the hunt began and to
remain there, immobile and without food or
water, for the duration of the hunt. As in North
Alaska, the Nootka whaler's wife embodied the
whale; her activities were transmitted to it and
vice versa. If she made sudden movements, the
whale would also. When the whalers returned,
she went to the shore to greet the whale,
commenting on its great thirst, after years in
the sea, and pouring a drink of fresh water into
its mouth. She then sang and danced her greet¬
ing.

Societies involved with whaling all had special
ceremonial festivals, in addition to rituals that
took place during the actual time of the hunt.
One of the best known is the Eskimo festival
called the Messenger Feast. This feast took place
after a successful hunt and was announced when
an umialik would send a messenger to neigh¬
boring villages inviting them to feast with him.
The feast helped create social solidarity and
spread the recently acquired wealth beyond the
umialik' s village. Presentation of lavish feasts
built the reputation of the umialik beyond that
of a family and village provider and established
him as a man of power, generosity, and esteem.
The Messenger Feast was the most important
social event of the year, bringing renewal and
rebirth and reaffirming the social values sup¬
porting the whaling complex. In this manner,
the accumulation and distribution of wealth and
the advancement of individual and community
status in North Alaska correspond to the potlatch
system on the Northwest Coast, where circum¬
stances provided use of more durable goods in
these exchanges.

These similarities between Siberian, Alaskan,
and Northwest Coast whaling methods, material
culture, and customs have been noted for many
years (Lantis 1938). It seems unlikely that whal¬
ing developed separately in each separate geo¬
graphic region, but the timing and nature of the
supposed cultural connections are not yet under¬
stood.

171

Kayak Whaling

Whaling methods of the Aleut and Pacific Eskimo
contrasted sharply with the umiak whaling of
Bering Sea cultures and more closely resembled
whaling methods employed by the Ainu of the
Kurile Islands and the Itelmen of the southern
Kamchatka Peninsula in Siberia. The Aleut and
Pacific Eskimo technique differed from the north¬
ern method in three major ways: use of kayaks
rather than umiaks or dugouts; use of poisoned
darts cast with throwing boards, rather than
harpoons; and utilization of whales after they
died and drifted ashore, rather than capturing
them directly. The Itelmen shot whales with
poisoned arrows from wooden dugout boats, and
a similar variation was apparently used by the
northern Ainu.

The crucial element in this method was the
use of an aconite poison made from the root of
the monkshood plant ( Aconitum sp.). Aleutian
and Pacific Eskimo whalers regarded human fat
derived from the bodies of deceased whalers or
"rich persons” as an essential and magically
potent ingredient, which was added to the poi¬
son. Although less efficient than harpoon hunt¬
ing, which provided a firm attachment to the
animal, use of poison and collection of dead
whales allowed the hunters to recover 10 to 50
percent of the whales struck.

Kayak hunting was conducted during the sum¬
mer months on the open ocean, sea ice never
being present in these regions. Hunters would
embark in one or more two-holed kayaks with
the main paddler in the stern and the hunter,
who also paddled, in the bow, where he had
access to the whale darts laid out before him on
the deck. The search for whales was aided when
calm seas permitted spouting whales to be seen
at great distances, but the whaler also relied on
medicine songs to bring him into contact with
his prey. These songs were considered central
to whaling success and were passed down from
ancient whalers; in other cases, whalers who
could not gain access to songs, or who needed
new ones, created them anew. Once sighted,
the whale was approached silently, again from
the left side, and the spear was hurled at a spot
behind the flipper. The wooden shaft detached
from the thin, poisoned slate blade and floated
free, to be retrieved, as the whale sounded. In
the Aleutians, a barbed, stone-tipped head was
used that detached from the dart after pene¬
trating the whale's skin.

The hunters then returned to shore to await
the effects of the poison, exacerbated by the
working of the point in the wound. The stricken

whale, killed by the poison or drowned because
of poison-induced paralysis in the flipper nearest
the wound, was generally dead within three
days. During this time the hunters sat, singing
songs to the whale, in front of a sacred cave
containing the mummified bodies of the great
whaling ancestors. If all the complex rituals
leading up to the whaling venture had been
strictly observed, not only by the hunters them¬
selves but also by the community as a whole,
the whale would die and float into the cove in
front of the village. As this rarely occurred, more
practical steps were also taken, including keep¬
ing a careful watch of the whale's movements,
if visible, or if not, estimating the effects of wind
and tide so that a successful search for the
carcass might be made in due course. In some
cases, kayakers were able to drive a dying whale
toward the village. The hunter who had struck
the whale could be determined by examining
his owner's mark scratched on the blade embed¬
ded in the carcass.

Use of the poison hunting technique allowed
a small group of hunters, in small boats, to strike
as many whales as they could successfully
approach. This avoided a large investment in
expensive equipment and could be carried out
without large boat crews. Although less efficient
than harpoon whaling, the method produced
adequate results. In this technique, elaboration
occurred not in technology but in the develop¬
ment of arcane knowledge surrounding poison
production and ritual, including the elevation of
the whaler's social position and postmortem
status. Disposal of deceased whalers in sacred
caves was vital to the conduct of ongoing whaling
practices and insured prominence of whaling
ancestors in the ritual and mythological life of
Aleut and Pacific Eskimo peoples.

218. "Aleutians striking humpback
whales: off Akootan Island, Bering
Sea"

Henry W. Elliott. SI-NAA 7119-9, SI
neg. 84-1816

Kayak whaling using poison-tipped
darts was practiced from the eastern
Aleutians to Prince William Sound,
but this method may have been a
contact period introduction from
Kamchatka (Heizer 1943). The rituals
surrounding the hunt and the prepa¬
ration of whaling poison, including
the use of the mummified bodies of
dead whalers, were elaborate and
suggest ancient roots, however.

Aleut, Koniag, and Chugach whalers
were feared for their supernatural
powers. Elliott's painting captures
the drama of an Aleut hunt off Aku-
tan Island, but is less than accurate
in some details. Most imporantly,
whale darts were cast with the aid of
a throwing board, not thrust directly
into the whale.

219. Whale Dart
Aleut: MAE 4270-44
Aleut whale darts had barbed bone
heads with chipped-stone endblades.
The head was coated with enough
aconite poison to paralyze one flipper
of the whale and cause it to drown.
With luck, the dead whale would be
found floating or washed up on
shore. Koniag whale darts had long,
poison-coated slate blades that broke
off in the wound.

172

Hunters, Herders, Trappers, and Fishermen

James W. VanStone

2E0. Caribou Spirit
Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 56026
In the Bering Sea Eskimo conception
of the world the caribou, like all
other animals, possessed a soul ( yua )
in human form that sometimes re¬
vealed itself and was capable of hu¬
man speech. The function of this
Bristol Bay caribou-human carving is
unknown, but the cord around its
middle suggests that it was sus¬
pended, possibly from the ceiling
during the Bladder Festival. During
that hunting ceremony it is known
that caribou skin strips and bladders
were hung up along with sea mam¬
mal bladders, wooden bird carvings,
and miniature paddles.

Although most Pacific Rim peoples practiced a
subsistence emphasis oriented primarily toward
the marine ecosystem, rivers and river mouths
have always been economically important to all
of them, and many groups, particularly those
without direct access to the seacoast, were
heavily dependent on inland game animals.
Peoples of the Pacific Rim, from the coast of
British Columbia to the mouth of the Amur
River, have traditionally exploited all aspects of
their environment even while emphasizing one
particular ecosystem.

Large game animals of primary subsistence
importance on the North American side of the
Bering Sea were the woodland caribou, barren
ground caribou, and moose. On the Asiatic side,
several groups relied heavily on a domesticated
relative of the caribou, the reindeer. In alpine
areas of northwestern North America the moun¬
tain goat and Dali sheep have been important
resources, but always in addition to moose and
woodland caribou. Black bears are widely dis¬
tributed on both continents but were never a
major food resource, although they were of ritual
importance to some peoples. Of the small mam¬

mals, hares were widely exploited and were
often a source of midwinter food when large
game was scarce.

All arctic and subarctic mammals larger than
voles, lemmings, and shrews were included in
the fur trade economy. European fur fashions,
which changed frequently, greatly influenced
the income and activities of native trappers. In
addition to the many fur-bearing animals that
were basic to the trade, large game was also
included for the hides and the meat that was
supplied to workers in the fur trade.

Along all the streams that have major salmon
runs, native peoples depended heavily on the
seasonal catch of several species of these fish.
Even in areas where there were no salmon, the
availability of fish in most lakes and streams
made them an important seasonal resource. With
the increase in the size of dog teams during the
historic period, large quantities of fish were
required for dog food. Migrating waterfowl,
particularly numerous species of ducks, were an
important source of food for brief periods, es¬
pecially in the spring.

173

River Fishing

The several species of salmon were the most
important fish economically throughout the Pa¬
cific Rim area. Salmon fishing depends on the
behavior of the fish at spawning time. Salmon
live in salt water but spawn in freshwater rivers,
streams, and, in the case of one species, lakes.
When the young fish hatch, they live in fresh
water for only a short time and then make their
way to the ocean. Two, three, or four years after
spawning, depending on the species, the mature
fish school in bays and inlets before making
their way up rivers to spawn. It is these periodic
runs that offer the best opportunity for intensive
fishing.

For the Indians of the Northwest Coast, salmon
fishing was vital for subsistence and a major
influence on their lifestyle. Several kinds of
harpoons, nets, and traps were used. Weirs were
constructed that permitted the flow of water but
directed the fish in such a manner that they
could easily be trapped, netted, or harpooned.
For fish as large as salmon, harpoons were
preferred to spears because the fish could not
tear loose as easily as they could from a weapon

with a fixed point. Salmon were netted with dip
nets manipulated from scaffoldings erected over
streams, from canoes, and from catwalks erected
on large weirs. Cylindrical traps with funneled
entries were placed on the bottoms of streams
and the fish directed toward them with weirs.

In addition to the predictable abundance of
salmon, these fish were important on the North¬
west Coast and elsewhere throughout the Pacific
Rim area because they are easily preserved.
Smoke dried, the flesh would last a considerable
time even under humid coastal conditions. In a
few days a family could catch and preserve
sufficient salmon to last them for several months,
thus providing leisure time for other activities.
The peoples of the Northwest Coast were the
only sedentary hunter-gatherers in North Amer¬
ica, and their rich culture was primarily the
result of the abundance of salmon.

Other varieties of fish also occur in annual
runs. Herring and smelt spawn along beaches,
and eulachon run in the lower courses of rivers
north of the Fraser. Although not as important
as salmon, they were taken in large quantities
with dip nets and eaten fresh or dried. Eulachon,
however, are so oil-rich that they cannot be
dried, but they were preserved for the oil, which
was a luxury for the Indians. The runs of these
species occurred in spring and summer, when
the previous fall's supply of dried salmon was

221. Button Blanket

Tsimshian: NMNH 274676
As described in the Tsimshian myth
of "The Prince Who Was Taken Away
by the Spring Salmon" (Boas
1916:192), each species of salmon
has its own chief and village beneath
the sea. When the cottonwood leaves
fall into the Skeena River, it is a sig¬
nal for the salmon to leave their vil¬
lages to head upstream, led by their
chief, the First Salmon. It is not
known what myth is illustrated by
this flannel-appliqued button blanket,
but its humanoid central figure may
represent a salmon chief. Alterna¬
tively, it may be the submarine
monster Nagunaks, whose crest hel¬
met is shown in figure 383.

222. "Interior or 'Stick' Indians
spearing in the canyon of the Fraser
River"

Henry W. Elliott, 1891. SI-NAA
7119-6, SI neg. 84-1808
Many methods were used on the
Northwest Coast for catching salmon
during their annual spawning runs,
including dip-netting and spearing
from platforms suspended over the
water.

174

223. A Tsimshian Shaman’s Outfit
Tsimshian: (clockwise from top)
UBCMA A157, A153, A152, A15Q,
A151

Tsimshian shamans could "see" the
movements of the salmon beneath
the sea, foretelling the beginning of
the annual spawning run. Renewal
rites led by shamans celebrated the
capture of the First Salmon, honoring
it and insuring the continuance of
harmony between humans and
salmon, the most important food re¬
source. This set of objects owned by
a shaman includes a canoe model,
salmon effigies, and "soul catcher"
tubes, all covered with red ocher.
These items may have played a role
in First Salmon ceremonies, although
their use is not specifically mentioned
in the rare accounts of the rites
which survive.

224. Grease Bow!

Tlingit: MAE 2539-17
A prized food and important article of
trade on the Northwest Coast was oil
("grease") rendered from the eula-
chon fish. Grease was served in small
wooden bowls, often carved in the
form of animals, and the beaver was
a favorite subject. He is shown here
with his distinctive incisors, flat tail,
stubby rounded nose, and stick held
in his forepaws.

low. Fishing with hook and line was reserved
for large species such as cod and halibut.

Indicative of the importance of salmon to the
Indians of the Northwest Coast was the impor¬
tance associated with the arrival of the first
salmon each year. Salmon were believed to
voluntarily sacrifice themselves for the benefit
of people, and thus it was necessary that they
be treated respectfully. The first fish taken each
year was conveyed by a priest to an altar in the
presence of the assembled group and positioned
with its head facing upstream so that the rest
of the salmon run would not head back to sea.
Throughout the rite, during which the fish was
treated as an honored guest of high rank, con¬
stant reference was made to the continuation of
the run. A speech of welcome was made, songs
and chants were sung, and the fish was cooked
and served to those present. The First Salmon
rite was typical of the piacation-of-game cere¬
monies prevalent throughout the Pacific Rim
area.

Among Alaskan Eskimo, the greatest depend¬
ence on fish occurred among various coastal and

riverine groups, especially those on the central
and lower Kobuk River, the Noatak River, and
the Lower Yukon, as well as coastal groups in
the Norton Sound, Kuskokwim Bay, and Bristol
Bay areas. These people, together with Eskimo
on Kodiak Island and the Kenai Peninsula, had
access to five species of salmon entering the
rivers to spawn as well as several other species
of freshwater fish. Salmon were caught in gill
nets or in traps set in association with weirs.
Individual fish were taken with harpoon darts.
The most important freshwater species, white-
fish, was trapped and netted.

In centra! Kamchatka, as well as on the North¬
west Coast and in the Amur-Sakhalin area, a
seasonally rich environment enabled the people
to lead a sedentary life of comparative leisure
during half the year. Among the Itelmen, life
revolved around fishing, particularly the taking
of the local species of salmon, which, as else¬
where, had to be exploited to the fullest extent
during the relatively brief period in which they
were available to each community. At those
times, everyone worked, the men catching the
fish and the women hanging them to dry. Most
salmon were taken in weirs fitted with basket
traps, but nets of several types, made of nettle
fibers, were also used. Fish were also speared
from riverbanks and dugout canoes.

Next in importance to fishing in the Itelmen
economy was the gathering of wild vegetable
products, which was more important here than
elsewhere in the Pacific Rim area. The local flora
was exploited to the fullest extent by women,
who were the gatherers. All edible plants were
utilized, and others were collected for household
or medicinal use. The nettle was an extremely
important plant, being the source of fiber cor-

175

dage and thread and thus the essential raw
material for the manufacture of fishnets.

Fish were also of primary importance in the
diet of the Nivkhi of Sakhalin Island and the
lower Amur River, and their life was regulated
by the seasonal runs of salmon and sturgeon.
Seines and nets of various sizes, mesh, and
construction made of nettle fiber were used.
Nets were set out from shore and erected seri¬
ally, primarily for night fishing. The heaviest
nets were used for sturgeon. Elaborate fish traps
were constructed in conjunction with weirs, and
large bag nets were employed for fishing from
boats and also for winter ice fishing. Fish were
also taken with rods, gaffs, hooks, and a variety
of harpoons and hand nets. For navigation of
shallow waters and narrow creeks the Nivkhi
used a dugout made of a single poplar trunk;
birchbark canoes were also used. The choice of
settlement location was determined to a large
extent by dependence on large-scale fishing.
River settlements were often occupied year-
round.

Land Hunting

Land game was abundant on the Northwest
Coast, especially deer, elk, black and grizzly
bear, and wolf. Furbearers included beaver,
mink, land otter, fisher, and marten. Flights of
waterfowl followed the Pacific flyway in their
seasonal migrations to and from their arctic and
subarctic nesting grounds.

Land animals were hunted and trapped in a
variety of ways depending on the habits of the
various species and the nature of the terrain.
Individual stalking, group drives, surrounds, spring
pole and simple snares, pitfalls, and bows and
arrows were all utilized. Nevertheless, land hunt¬
ing was of relatively minor importance because
of the emphasis on exploitation of sea and river
products. Among the Indian groups living along
the coast, there were a few villages situated at
the head of tidewaters or on rivers. Sea mammals
were less accessible in these areas, and conse¬
quently land game was more important.

Although land hunting was important to all
Alaskan Eskimo, even to those where the mar¬

itime emphasis was strongest, the environment
of the Brooks Range in northwest Alaska where
the Nunamiut live offered perhaps the, least
potential for a balanced economy. Among these
Eskimo the annual subsistence cycle focused on
the hunting of caribou. Although accessible
throughout the year in small numbers, caribou
were most abundant during early summer when
the herds moved north and in the fall as they
moved south. The most successful method of
taking migrating animals was through the co¬
operative efforts of a number of hunters and
families. Two converging lines of cairns made
of rocks or sod were erected at a place where

225. Arrows and Shaft Straightener
Chukchi: AMNH 70-6980b,e,d;

North Alaskan Eskimo: NMNH
383300

Bow and arrows served the Chukchi
in both war and in the hunting of
wild caribou, small game, and birds.
Arrows of many types, some with
skin sheaths to protect their sharp
points, were made for different
game. The ability to split a blade of
grass with the point of an arrow was
proof of the greatest skill in archery.
The Eskimo arrow shaft straightener
was used as a wrench to true arrows
in the process of manufacture.

the caribou were likely to concentrate. These
cairns looked like men to the animals. Near the

converging point earthen mounds were con¬
structed to hide the hunters, and snares were
set in circles beyond the mounds. As the caribou
approached the cairns, women and children
appeared behind the herd and frightened the
animals toward the hunters, who shot them with
bows and arrows. Those not killed were caught
in the snares and speared. Cairns were also
used to guide the caribou toward lakes where
they could be killed easily by hunters in kayaks.
Caribou meat was eatable at any time, but the
skins were best when taken from animals in the
summer and early fall. The meat and skins from
cooperative hunts were divided equally among
the hunters.

Many species of land animals as diverse in
size as ground squirrels, wolves, and Dali sheep
were also taken in snares. Bears were also snared
and wolverines taken in rock deadfalls. Moose,
which were numerous in the willows along rivers
and streams, were shot with bows and arrows.
Migrating ducks and geese were also available
seasonally. The Nunamiut shared a caribou¬
hunting emphasis with Eskimo of the upper

226. Bows

Koniag Eskimo (Alaska Peninsula):
MAE 593-64 (top); Chugach Eskimo:
MAE 2913-20

Painted images of caribou, sea otter,
and beaver reflea the faa that the
Koniag and Chugach hunted on both
land and sea using bows. Visible on
the upper bow of this pair is the si¬
new cable backing typical of Eskimo
bows; an ivory plate at midlength
adds even more strength and elastic¬
ity. The inner side of the longer bow
is shown, with the bowstring re¬
moved. The use of red and black
paint to decorate weapons is similar
to Aleut praaice, as is the decorative
use of fine hairs and strands of yarn
on the Alaska Peninsula bow.

176

Noatak and Kobuk rivers, but caribou were also
important to people living along the Bering Sea
coast, where the animals moved in summer to
avoid insects.

Among Athapaskans, big-game hunting tended
to be most important to those people living at

227. Siberian Quivers
Koryak: MAE 956-87; Chukchi:
AMNH 70-6980a; Chukchi: MAE
408-71 (left to right)

The meanings of the ancient designs
and symbols embroidered on Koryak
and Chukchi quivers were no longer
known by the time these examples
were collected 85-90 years ago. The
silk-embroidered funeral quiver on
the left was meant to be burned with
the hunter on his pyre; an anthropo¬
morphic design fills its lower panel.
Decorated quivers contrast with the
generally plain aspect of Chukchi
craftwork.

the headwaters of the major rivers and their
tributaries and to those whose territories encom¬
passed the divide between the Pacific and arctic
drainages. Like the Nunamiut, Athapaskan hunt¬
ers made their greatest harvest when the ani¬
mals were massed together and thus especially
vulnerable. Caribou massed for migrations were
taken either in surrounds placed in mountain
passes or from boats when the herds were
crossing rivers. Athapaskan hunters used a kayak-
form canoe covered with birch bark and decked
at both ends. It also served for fishing and
visiting fish traps and nets.

Migrating waterfowl were exploited when they
massed in breeding areas and were molting.
Moose were hunted from canoes when swim¬

ming in rivers, and thus helpless, or run down
in the deep, crusted snow of late winter, which
supports the weight of a hunter on showshoes
but breaks and retards the movement of a much
heavier moose. In large areas of the Athapaskan
region there were few game animals, and changes
in annual populations, such as caribou migration
routes, frequently caused starvation among na¬
tive populations.

Among the Nivkhi hunting was of secondary
importance to fishing as a means of subsistence,
but it was nevertheless significant as a source
of wealth and prestige. Forest animals were
hunted primarily for their pelts, which, during
the contact period, provided the currency for
acquiring prestigious trade goods.

The Nivkhi utilized hereditary winter hunting
territories based on lineage affiliation. A man
hunted alone within his section of a territory
and inspected his traps every three or four days.
Sables, the most important fur-bearing animals,
were taken in noose and deadfall traps designed
so as not to injure the animal's pelt. A typical
trap was constructed within a tree hollow with
the bait just inside the hollow. The animal, in
reaching for the bait, was strangled by a falling
stick. Another form of trap involved a trigger
mechanism that released an arrow or, in the
case of big game, a spear. The Nivkhi did not
hunt with dogs.

Bears were hunted cooperatively by groups
of kinsmen, the objective being to capture the
animal alive, chain and lash it to a platform
made of several sleds, and return it to the village,
where it played an important role in lineage
rituals. The best hunters sometimes hunted
bears alone to kill them. The animal was located
in its winter lair, the entrance partially blocked,
and the bear roused to be killed with a multi¬
pronged pike or spear as it attempted to escape.

Animals hunted for other than ceremonial
reasons included deer, moose, wolves, and lynx.
Hares were killed for food and for ritual purposes.
The fur, especially the head and ears, was
believed to offer protection from evil spirits. The
ownership of lynx pelts conveyed high prestige.
A variety of birds, especially waterfowl, were
killed with small arrows and, during the molting
season, clubbed with sticks; ptarmigan, grouse,
and partridges were taken in snares. Weapons
employed in hunting, principally the compound
bow, spear, lance, and pike, were also used in
war.

177

In Northeastern Siberia live the only people
along the Pacific Rim whose subsistence de¬
pended primarily on a domestic animal. Among
the Koryak of the upper Kamchatka Peninsula
and the east coast of the Okhotsk Sea, there
were maritime hunters on the coast as well as
reindeer herders in the interior and some groups
that had a mixed economy. The Chukchi, neigh¬
bors of the Koryak to the north, were also divided
into maritime and reindeer groups.

For the reindeer-breeding Koryak, these ani¬
mals provided the principal item of the diet as
well as the basic material for clothing, skins to
cover dwellings, and sinew for thread. The
Koryak kept large herds, often exceeding 100
animals, in contrast to most Eurasian reindeer¬
breeding groups, which followed a pattern of
intensive breeding using small herds exploited
for dairy products and transportation but seldom
slaughtered. Both the Koryak and the Chukchi
employed reindeer for drawing sleds but did not
ride them.

Among the Koryak a reindeer herd grazed
near the encampment in winter. As soon as this
pasture was exhausted, a search was undertaken
for another. When one was selected the entire
camp, consisting of double tents of skin, moved
to the new site, and herdsmen moved the herd.
These migrations took place four or five times
during the winter. In spring, before calving.

females were separated from the rest of the
herd. Calving time was a difficult period for the
reindeer breeders since the newborn calves had
to be protected from predators and also kept
from freezing. At this time the herdsmen were
assisted by members of their families, and even
old people and children helped in guarding the
herds.

Following the calving season, the herds were
driven into the mountains for the summer. Choice
of a summer pasture was of utmost importance
and determined the welfare of the herd for the
entire year. Summer herding required consid¬
erable skill and experience as well as knowledge
of the reindeer's requirements and conditions
of the tundra. During this period the Koryak
encampment was moved to a summer site,
usually on a riverbank where the meat diet could
be supplemented with fish. In the fall the herds¬
men brought the herd to the camp, and this
annual occasion was one of the major holidays
of the Koryak and the time of important cere¬
monies and rituals.

Reindeer herding among the Chukchi and
Koryak was accomplished without the assistance
of dogs. A good herder required agility, good
eyes, and considerable skill with a leather lasso
if he was to protect the herd from wolves and
snowstorms in winter, foxes and ravens in spring
during the calving season, and from insects in

228. Reindeer Herders of Siberia
AMNH neg. 4169, Jesup Exp.; Chuk¬
chi: 70-6979a, 70-7684, 0-239
Koryak reindeer herders, here in a
spring encampment (Jochelson's tent
in center), led a nomadic life, con¬
stantly moving on as the herd re¬
quired new pasture. Reindeer sup¬
plied food, skins, and draught power.
Chukchi reindeer sled driving equip¬
ment included the training club (top),
used for violently jerking the reins
while breaking in a new animal to
the sled; an ivory-tipped driving
whip, and a harness trace with a
spiked bone bit that dug into the ani¬
mal's neck when pulled by the driver.

178

229. Alaskan Reindeer Herders
Glenbow- Alberta Institute neg.
NC-1-890

In this Lomen Brothers photograph
Alaskan Eskimos pose with their sled
reindeer near the Kuzitrin River on
the Seward Peninsula (1920s). The
experimental grafting of reindeer
herding, a Siberian economic pattern,
onto Alaskan Eskimo culture enjoyed
only brief and limited success.

spring and summer. It was necessary for the
herders to remain with the herd at all times.

Chukchi herdsmen were brought to Northwest
Alaska with reindeer herds in 1891—92 for a
herding program instituted by the U.S. Bureau
of Education at the suggestion of Dr. Sheldon
Jackson, a Presbyterian missionary. The inten¬
tion was to provide Alaskan Eskimos with a new
source of food to offset the decline in sea
mammals caused by unrestricted killing of whales,
walrus, and seals by commercial interests during
the second half of the 19th century. There was
a small market for the meat and skins, and it
was hoped that the Eskimos could derive a cash
income from their sale and that reindeer would
replace dogs for local transportation.

The reindeer herds were, at first, frequently
owned by non-Eskimos, especially individuals at
the missions. In the early years of the project
Lapps from northern Norway replaced the Chuk¬
chi, and a system of apprenticeships for Eskimos
was established. As they became experienced
in herding through working with the Lapp her¬
ders, Eskimos became individual owners of deer.
After 1918, the reindeer industry gradually
became dominated by companies, such as the
Loman Brothers in Nome, who owned trading
posts and transport as well as stock. Their
monopoly continued until the Reindeer Act of
1 937, which restricted the ownership of reindeer
to natives, but by this time the industry was in
a considerable decline.

Involvement of Alaskan Eskimos in the rein¬
deer-herding program can be understood by
examining the participation of people from one
village. In 1894 two men from Point Hope were
sent to the reindeer station at Teller on Seward
Peninsula to learn herding practices, and one of

them brought part of his herd and some gov¬
ernment deer back to the village in 1908. At
first the reindeer did well at Point Hope. Most
of the animals were individually owned and
identified by special marks on the ears. However,
this proved to be an unsatisfactory arrangement
because the herds were hard to separate on the
basis of individual marks. In 1926 all deer were
counted into one herd, numbering 4, 1 00 animals,
owned by a joint stock company of Eskimos. Six
years later there were 6,000 deer. The herd
seems to have maintained its size until 1938,
when the first sizable decrease was noted, and
by 1945 there were only 500 animals. In 1947
the herd was returned to the government be¬
cause it was too small to pay its way. A herder
was hired, but when, in 1948, he left the herd
to get supplies, the remaining 250 animals
disappeared.

The attempt to make reindeer herders out of
the Alaskan Eskimos was unsuccessful for a
variety of reasons. The deer themselves were
subject to various parasites and were killed in
large numbers by wolves. If not carefully watched
by the herdsmen, they tended to wander off
with the caribou; certain areas were overgrazed
through careless herding. Most significant of all,
perhaps, was the fact that the coastal Eskimos
of Northwest Alaska were a sedentary people
who followed a definite cycle of hunting and
fishing quite foreign to the nomadic routine of
close herding practiced by Siberian reindeer
herders. At Point Hope, for example, even the
most dedicated herdsmen desired to return to
the village for the spring whaling activities, and
it was at this time that large numbers of deer
wandered away and were lost.

179

Transportation

For the Alaskan Eskimo and Athapaskans, land
travel with dogs and sleds was important for
hunting caribou and fur trapping, as well as for
setting fish traps through the ice. Eskimos re¬
quired such transportation for hunting sea mam¬
mals at the edge of the ice, and both peoples
visited trading posts and distant relatives in
other villages or where special festivals were
being held. Several different forms of sleds were
used throughout western Alaska, varieties de¬
veloped in response to ice and snow conditions
and the type of activity for which the sled was
required. Small hand-drawn sleds were used to

haul meat and transport kayaks to the edge of
the ice. Traditionally Eskimo dog teams were
small, seldom more than three to five animals
hitched in tandem to a central tow line with a
single leader. Larger teams and lighter sleds
were introduced by Euro-Americans in the fur
trapping era, and both Eskimo and Athapaskans
were thus required to process large quantities
of dried fish for dog food.

During the aboriginal period, all winter hunt¬
ing by most northern Athapaskans was carried
out on foot since dogs were not yet used for
pulling sleds or toboggans. Therefore, snow-

230. Dog Sledding
AMNH neg. 2420, Jesup Exp.

Sled Models (left to right) Chukchi:
AMNH 70-7888; Bering Sea Eskimo:
NMNH 260531; Itelmen: MAE 864-1
Dog sledding was primarily the prac¬
tice of coastal and riverine groups.
The old harnessing method, practiced
by both Siberians and the Alaskan
Eskimo, was a fan arrangement in
which each dog was tied directly to
the sled (models.). The Russian tan¬
dem method (photo) allowed faster
speeds.

231. Skis

Itelmen: AMNH 70-7689a,b
The aboriginal cross-country skis
used by many Siberian groups were
covered on the bottom with slick
reindeer-leg skins or sealskin (the lat¬
ter, in this case), with the hair turn¬
ing backward to assist in ascending
hills, yet smooth enough to glide
down. In touting the efficiency of
these skis, Bogoras noted that Even
skiiers running alongside his dogsled
could easily keep up without visible
strain for miles.

shoes were important items of material culture,
and many groups made two types. The first,
called hunting snowshoes, were long and rounded
in front and were used for walking over fresh
snow. The second type, travel snowshoes, were
shorter with a pointed and sharply upturned
front end. These smaller snowshoes allowed the
wearer to sink more deeply into the snow and
were used for walking on a previously broken
trail or, in later times, to break a trail for a dog
team. Eskimos in Southwest Alaska used
snowshoes similar to the travel type for trav¬
ersing land where protected conditions resulted
in the accumulation of soft, deep snow. In
Northwest Alaska Eskimo used crude, short
snowshoes for travel over sea ice. Their primary
purpose was to distribute the weight over a
wider area when crossing new or weak ice.

The Itelmen were dog breeders, but unlike
the Alaskan Eskimo, dogs played only a minor
role in their economic life. The Itelmen sled,
with its saddlelike superstructure, could carry
no load and was a unique form with no obvious
parallel elsewhere in the Arctic or Subarctic.
There is no evidence to indicate another style
of sled for transporting freight, but the Russians
did introduce such a sled that became an integral
part of post-contact Itelmen culture. Dogs were
tied up and fed on fish in winter but turned
loose to fend for themselves in summer.

The principal means of transportation for the
reindeer-breeding Chukchi and Koryak were
reindeer, and the maritime groups traveled by
dogsled. Reindeer sleds were of two types, a
light traveling vehicle and a heavier one for
hauling freight. The traveling sled was made of
slender poles held together with hide lashing,
curved antler stanchions, and narrow runners
curved in front. A pair of reindeer were har¬
nessed not on the front but slightly to the left
so that the driver could see everything in front
of him. As a rule, only one man rode on the
sled, sitting astride it and balancing with his
feet. The reindeer were managed with the aid

of long reins and a whip with a bone tip. Freight
sleds were heavier and pulled by a single rein¬
deer. They were used primarily during seasonal
movements for transporting household belong¬
ings, women, and small children. Travel by dog
team among the maritime Chukchi and Koryak
underwent substantial changes after the middle
of the 19th century. The fanlike method of
harnessing dogs and the sled of the reindeer
type were replaced by the so-called eastern
Siberian sled and tandem hitch.

The Even of east-central Siberia were also
reindeer breeders, the deer being ridden and
employed as pack animals during the long jour¬
neys involved in hunting furs and meat and on
summer trips to rivers for fishing. Thus the
reindeer differed from the Chukchi and Koryak
breed, being larger and having greater strength
and endurance ("Lamut reindeer”). Harnessing
to sleds was practiced only in northern Kam¬
chatka and other areas bordering the territory
of the Chukchi and Koryak where the reindeer-
harnessing complex was borrowed in its en¬
tirety.

On the Lower Amur River dogs served as
draft animals and also provided fur for clothing
and meat for food. The traditional Nivkhi sled
was long and narrow, and the driver straddled
it, his feet on short skis. Although light and fast,
these sleds could transport considerable weight.
The dogs were harnessed to a tow line alter¬
nately rather than in pairs. By the middle of the
19th century, this sled had been replaced by a
heavier Russian form.

Nivkhi hunters used long and relatively wide
skis made of larch or birch. One form was unlined
and worn on trips to fishing sites, for wood
cutting trips, and for visits to neighboring vil¬
lages. This type of ski was particularly well
suited for travel over deep, soft snow. For
hunting, when speed and silence were required,
skis lined on the bottoms with several layers of
seal, moose, or deer skin were preferred (fig.
231).

181

232, Reindeer Riders
AMNH neg. 11133, Jesup Exp.

Evenk or Yukaghir: saddle, AMNH
70-5264; saddlebags, 70-5222;
cradle, 70-5200

The Even (photo), Evenk, Yukaghir,
and other Siberian groups west of the
Chukchi and Koryak used reindeer
more for riding than pulling sleds.
Saddles were placed well forward,
over the forelegs, to avoid straining
the weak back of the animal. Chil¬
dren rode in a saddle with side
panels to prevent falls — the child's
legs slipped through between the
boards and saddle. Very young chil¬
dren were carried in beaded and
fringed cradles (bottom) that were
hung like packbags on the reindeer's
side. The beads were obtained from
Russian traders, and include large
light blue Chinese beads, as well as
deep blue opaque beads of Venetian
origin.

182

Economic Patterns in Northeastern Siberia

/. /. Krupnik

The local and ethnic variants of traditional sub¬
sistence systems known in northeastern Asia
and Alaska in the late 19th and early 20th
century can be divided into six basic types:
settled maritime hunting (type 1); seminomadic
hunting and herding (type 2); seminomadic hunt¬
ing and fishing (type 3); intensive fishing (type
4); intensive reindeer herding (type 5); and the
creole-introduced economy of Russified or
Americanized settlers (type 6). This essay dis¬

cusses the five types that occur in Siberia. Type
3, confined to Alaska during this period, is
discussed in a subsequent essay (p. 193). The
first three of these economic systems have
ancient origins in neolithic cultures of North¬
eastern Siberia. Intensive reindeer nomadism
and Russified mixed economy, on the other hand,
emerged only in the 17th and 18th centuries.
This essay describes the cultural, geographic,
seasonal, and historical aspects of these eco-

233. Economic Systems of Siberia
and Alaska (Late 19th Century)

Both contrasts and similarities are
apparent in this comparison of tradi¬
tional Siberian and Alaskan economic
patterns. Maritime hunters, who sub¬
sisted mainly on sea mammals and
lived in large, stable communities,
occupied most coastal areas on both
sides of Bering Strait. Intensive
salmon fishing dominated the North¬
west Coast and overlapped sea mam¬
mal hunting in Southwest Alaska, but
also occurred on Siberia's Kamchatka
Peninsula. The strongest interconti¬
nental contrast was between the in¬
tensive reindeer herders of northeast¬
ern Siberia and the caribou hunters
of interior Alaska; only the former
were food producers. In many areas
of Russian influence a Creole or
mixed economy had developed since
contact, which combined cash and
subsistence sources of income.

nomic types as they relate to the traditional,
pre-1900 populations of this region.

The distribution of traditional economies of
Northeast Siberia fall into three geographic re¬
gions that follow major environmental zones (fig.
233). The coastal zone, following the shores of
the Arctic and the Pacific oceans, was inhabited
by the sea mammal hunters and, on the extreme
south, by sedentary fishermen. The second zone,
which included the maritime lowlands and
mountainous areas of the Chukotkan and Ko-
ryakan plateau, the Anadyr plateau, and the
surrounding mountain range, was the territory
of nomadic reindeer herders. Finally, the third
inner zone of continental mountain ranges and
plateaus was occupied by the seminomadic
hunter— reindeer herders. The Russian Siberians

Economic Systems in Siberia and Alaska

Siberia

Alaska

1 . Settled Maritime Hunting

a. Arctic Chukotka g. North Alaska Coast

b. Bering Strait

c. Kerek

d. EasternKoryak

e. Western Koryak

f. Commander Is.

Seminomadic
Herding and
Hunting

a. Arctic

b. Subarctic (taiga)

h. West Alaska Coast

i. Aleut

j. Pacific Eskimo

k. Nootka-Makah

3. Seminomadic

Hunting and Fishing

a. Arctic

b. Subarctic

4. Intensive Fishing

a. Itelmen c. West Alaska

b. South Koryak Riverine

d. Gulf of Alaska

e. Northwest Coast

5. Intensive Reindeer Herding

a. Chukchi

b. Koryak

c. Chuvantsy

(or Russian settlers, Starozhili) and creole (mixed
Russian-native) population, who practiced a mixed
economy, inhabited peripheral regions and pock¬
ets within the larger three zones.

6. Creole/Introduced Economy

a. Kolyma

b. Anadyr

c. Gizhiga

d. Kamchadal

e. Russian Settler

f. Eastern Aleut

g. Kodiak

h. Northwest Coast
Mixed

183

Ancient Hunting and Fishing Economies

Settled Maritime Hunting

Settled maritime hunting (type 1) was the pre¬
vailing form of subsistence on the maritime
coastal area from Cape Billings to the western
and eastern shores of the Kamchatka Peninsula,
on the mainland coast of the Okhotsk Sea at the
mouth of the Taui River in the 17th and 18th
centuries, and at the mouth of the Siglan River
in the 19th century. At the end of the 19th
century, more than 7,000 sea hunters including
Asian Eskimo, Aleut, Maritime Chukchi, Mari¬
time Koryak, and Kerek lived a sedentary life in
permanent settlements in this territory. Here,
in various places, they hunted small sea mam¬
mals such as seals, sea otters, and sea lions, as
well as larger species like bowhead and gray
whales, walrus, and beluga with bark and wood-
frame boats and skin-covered kayaks and umi¬
aks, using toggling harpoons, spears, nets, and
traps. Fishing, bird hunting, and gathering of
plants, berries, and seafood supplemented the
sea mammal diet throughout the territory. Dog-
sled transportation played an important role in
this economy. In general, the hunting of land
animals was of minor importance in this coastal
region.

The annual cycle of these sedentary hunters
consisted of a succession of seasonal movements
with one or two peak periods of intensive activity,
usually in the summer or spring and in the fall

during the annual sea mammal or fish migra¬
tions. At this time the population secured fresh
food for people and dogs and prepared large
amounts of food for winter consumption.
Throughout the year the staple food was fresh,
frozen, or fermented meat and sea mammal fat,
preserved in caches dug into the frozen ground,
and fresh or dried fish. In winter, sea mammals
caught at the ice edge and in pockets of open
water at the time of freeze-up and ice fishing
occasionally provided fresh food.

The sedentary sea hunters lived in large
settlements numbering from several dozen to a
few hundred people. They occupied a territory
with precisely fixed coastal boundaries. Within
the boundaries of such a territory each com¬
munity had usually one or two central settle¬
ments, containing both summer and winter
houses, and a few summer camps or hunting
stations. As a rule, the annual migration on dog
sledges or in umiaks within the limits of the
territory did not exceed a few dozen miles.

At the end of the 19th century, sedentary sea
hunting as a group's major subsistence activity
was represented in northeastern Asia with a few
local or ethnic variations. These variations were,
from north to south (fig. 233), the Arctic Chu¬
kotka type (la), which existed from Cape Billings
to Cape Serdtse-Kamen' on the Arctic coast, was
practiced by the Maritime Chukchi, and included
the hunting of seal and polar bear by individual

234. Koryak Bringing Home a
Beluga Whale

AMNH neg. 1423, Jesup Exp.

The Maritime Koryak were formerly
great whalers, but 19th-century com¬
mercial hunting by American whaling
ships in the Sea of Okhotsk nearly
destroyed this source of livelihood.

By the time they were studied by Jo-
chelson, the Koryak took only an oc¬
casional small whale, such as this be¬
luga (white whale). The complex
ceremonies surrounding whaling
were still carried out, however.

184

235. Chukchi Duck Hunters at Cape

Wankarem

SI neg. 6924, E.W. Nelson, 1881
Sea birds and migratory fowl were an
important supplement to the diets of
maritime hunters. Flying birds were
captured using bolas (fig. 13), here
worn around the head where they
would be instantly available to hurl
at passing flocks. Bolas were given
up after shotguns came into use and
made the birds too wary to pass
within bolas range.

hunters; the Bering Strait type (lb) in the east¬
ern, southern, and partly northern coasts of the
Chukotkan Peninsula, in which Asian Eskimo and
Maritime Chukchi practiced collective hunting of
whale and walrus; the Kerek type (lc) on the
southern coast of the Anadyr Bay and the coast
of the Koryak plateau, as far as the Gulf of
Nataliia, where a subgroup of the Koryak prac¬
ticed seal and walrus hunting, mainly without
harpoons, and hunted birds in bird colonies; an
Eastern Koryak type (Id) along the cliff shores
of the Koryak plateau and the eastern coast of
Kamchatka to the mouth of the Uka River, where
sedentary Koryak-Aleuts on the Karaga and Uka
rivers fished, hunted summer seals and small
whales with nets, and speared walrus at haul-
outs; a Western Koryak type (le) from the
western coast of Kamchatka to the mouth of the
Uka River, were sedentary Koryak from the
Palana, Kamen', Paren', Itka villages, and mixed
Koryak-Even groups engaged in fishing, seal
hunting with nets and harpoons at haul-outs,
and collective whale hunts in umiaks; and a

Commander type (If) in the Bering Sea and
Mednii Islands, where Aleuts and creoles were
involved in commercial hunting of seal and sea
otter at haul-outs, an economy that began in the
early 19th century when the Russian American
Company established itself in the Commander
Islands.

Unlike the maritime hunters of northern Alaska,
the sedentary hunters of northeastern Asia did
not have to leave the coast to hunt wild caribou
in remote regions of the tundra every summer.
The products they needed — meat and skins —
were obtained from the nomadic reindeer her¬
ders in exchange for maritime products. As a
result, long-term partnerships between coastal
and tundra inhabitants — both individual families
and whole communities — allowed mutual rela¬
tionships to develop. In years or periods of
starvation on the seacoast, the sedentary pop¬
ulation moved in masses to the tundra to join
the nomadic groups; correspondingly, during
difficult periods on the interior, reindeer herders
would move to the coast.

185

Seminomadic Hunting and Herding

The hunting-herding economy (type 2) in North¬
east Siberia was characteristic of the Even people
of the basin of the Kolyma, Anadyr, and Penzhina
rivers and the inland parts of Kamchatka, as well
as of the Tundra Yukaghir of the lower Kolyma,
representing approximately 3,000 people. This
form of subsistence was in the process of de¬
velopment before the arrival of the Russians but
underwent major transformations during the
17th and 18th centuries. The custom of raising
reindeer for transportation was brought by the
Even to the Northeast during their eastward
spread in northern Siberia, as was the special
breed of strong saddle reindeer, so-called Lamut
reindeer. Reindeer were used exclusively for
transportation and were consumed as food only
in case of starvation. The number of reindeer
ran from a few head per family up to two or
three dozen. The basic form of subsistence

before contact consisted of large game hunting,
like wild reindeer, elk, bear, snow sheep. Fishing
played a lesser, although significant role. Gath¬
ering was relatively unimportant. The nomadic
hunters did not practice sea hunting.

In the vast, mountainous, and almost impen¬
etrable inland regions of northeastern Asia, the
Even settled in stable groups of a few dozen
families. Each group had its own territory, al¬
though the limits of the hunting territory were,
of necessity, flexible. The nomadic hunters did
not have permanent settlements. With the Rus¬
sian penetration of the Northeast, the Even
became involved in trapping and hunting of
furbearers, which, until then, had had a subsid¬
iary character only. At first fur had been a means
to pay taxes, but later fur trade became a
commercial enterprise. Originally the demand
was for mink; then squirrel, ermine, and marten

236. Russian Firearms
Koryak: AMNH 70-3543 (board)
Chukchi, AMNH 70-5695 (gun),
70-5698 (gun kit)

The guns available to Siberian hunt¬
ers and herders at the turn of the
20th century were for the most part
Russian flintlocks, fitted out with
homemade stands and gun kits. This
gun kit was worn as a belt and in¬
cludes a ramrod, bullet bag, powder
horns, and powder measure. The gun
barrel and firing mechanism were
covered with a skin bag or cloth to
protect them from moisture. A hunter
(top) takes aim at a mountain goat on
a Koryak cutting board drawing.

186

237. Fox Trap
Chukchi: AMNH 70-6453
The traditional Siberian fox trap had
a long striking arm held under ten¬
sion by twisted sinew cables inside a
wood or whalebone body. The trap
shown here is half-cocked; when set
the arm was held back by a trigger
attached to a cord, and the whole
device was buried in the snow. At
the other end of the cord was the
bait, usually a fish head; the first pull
on the bait released the arm and the
fox was struck on the head.

in the taiga and the arctic fox and wolverine in
arctic regions took its place. In the 19th century
the fur trade provided the hunter-herders with
up to 90 percent of their cash income.

The traditional method of hunting wild rein¬
deer and elk was to follow individual prey on
saddle reindeer or on skis, often with the help
of hunting dogs. The Even used firearms before
any other group of Northeastern Siberia, by the
middle and end of the 18th century. They were
considered excellent marksmen. The intensifi¬
cation of the hunting economy and the intro¬
duction of firearms allowed the Even to enlarge
their territory considerably in the 18th and 19th
centuries, by taking over central Kamchatka and
the basin of the eastern confluents of the Kolyma,
such as the Omolon and the Aniui, which had
been inhabited earlier by Yukaghir hunters on
foot.

At the end of the 19th century, with the
depletion of wild reindeer, the Lamut hunters
of central Kamchatka and of the Okhotsk Sea
began to shift towards production herding of
reindeer for meat and hides.

In the traditional annual cycle, at the beginning
of fall, seminomadic hunter-herders set the rein¬
deer free in open pasture in the taiga and
engaged in fishing. At the first snow the reindeer
were gathered, and the group moved to distant
hunting grounds, sometimes as far as several
hundred kilometers away. Here, until the begin¬
ning of spring, the hunters and herders practiced
intensive fur trapping and hunting of wild rein¬
deer and elk. After the birth of the calves, they
moved back to the summer camps again.

In the 19th century, under the influence of
contact and commercial fur trade, hunter-herder
subsistence underwent a specific change. Com¬
mercial nets made of horsehair or hemp became
widespread, increasing fishing productivity. Trade
food items such as flour, tea, and sugar, and
also tobacco, cloth clothing, and manufactured
utensils became available in everyday life. The
greater availability of trade goods made the fur
trade all the more important in subsistence, and
hunters had to look further and further for new
hunting grounds. Two regional variations of
seminomadic and trade economy developed: the
arctic type (2a) in the tundra, where hunting
molting birds, massive hunts of wild reindeer at
river crossings, and other activities learned from
the local Tundra Yukaghir played a notably
important role; and the initial subarctic type (2b)
in the taiga and broken forest.

Intensive Fishing

Intensive fishing (type 4) still existed at the end
of the 19th century as a basic subsistence form
only among the native population of Kamchatka,
the Itelmen, and partly among their neighbors,
the most southern groups of sedentary Koryak
from the Uka, Karaga, and Palana villages. For
these last groups, representing a total of ap¬
proximately 1,500 people, intensive fishing was
a complement to sea hunting.

Despite abundant resources of salmon and
other fish species migrating every year to the
coasts of Northeastern Siberia, the area of spe¬
cialized sedentary fishing economy was signifi¬
cantly less here than on the Northwest Coast of
North America. Nothing comparable to such
developed forms of social organization and art,
characteristic of sedentary fishing societies of
the American continent like the Tlingit, Haida,
Kwakiutl, and others, existed in Siberia.

One can reconstruct the form of subsistence
of the sedentary fishermen of Kamchatka from
descriptions written in the first half of the 18th
century. Fishing of migratory species of salmon
(pink, sockeye, coho, chum, chinook) swimming
up the rivers of the peninsula every year to
spawn constituted the basic form of subsistence.
The most efficient technology was weir fishing.
Nets made of nettle fiber and various kinds of
hooks and fish spears were also used. Gathering
of wild plants played an important role, and
hunting birds and land game such as bear and
fox played a subsidiary role.

The economic cycle of the sedentary fisher¬
men included one peak season only, the summer
migration period of the fish. As fish was the
staple food throughout the year, huge stocks
were prepared in the summer for winter use:

187

238. Koryak Women Cleaning Fish
AMNH neg. 1656, Jesup Exp.

The salmon are being cleaned and
split in preparation for drying. Dried
and/or lightly smoked salmon was an
important food among coastal groups,
even those not having an intensive
fishing adaptation, because it could
be stored for winter consumption.

sun-dried fish, called iukola, fish meal, and fish
fermented in pits. Fish was also the staple food
for sled dogs.

The most striking feature of the subsistence
of the Itelmen fishermen was their relatively
weak use of sea and coastal resources. Meat
from sea mammals was appreciated, but the
fishermen took little part in hunting them; game
was caught only along the shore because their
dugout canoes were not serviceable on the open
sea.

The population of the sedentary fishermen
consisted of closed kinship and economic groups
of a few hundred people. Each group inhabited
a river valley or the basin of a few confluent
rivers, in a few settlements of 50 to 100 people.
Each of these settlements had one to three
communal semisubterranean winter houses and
a few dozen family houses for use in the summer.
Near the permanent winter settlements, estab¬
lished at some distance from the seashore, were
also temporary summer camps close to the
mouth of the river where most of the fishing
took place. The yearly move of fishermen within
their territory covered no more than a few miles.

With the arrival of the Russians in Kamchatka
in the 18th century, the subsistence system of

the sedentary fishermen underwent drastic
changes. With the attempt to intensify the fur
trade, the most valuable fur animals were rapidly
depleted. Following the example of the Russian
settlers and under the pressure of the Russian
administration, the natives took up garden ag¬
riculture, mainly growing of beets and potatoes,
and later began to raise milk animals and horses.
The breeding of sled dogs also became important
because of the needs of the Russian administra¬
tion and the lack of other means of transporta¬
tion.

By the end of the 19th century, the sedentary
fishermen had adopted numerous features of
the Russian culture. They lived in log cabins,
wore trade clothing, and used trade utensils.
They had garden vegetables and livestock, for
which they had to store hay for the winter. New
ways to prepare fish — salted, smoked — came
into practice, and new ways to consume it too,
by baking homemade breads of fish meal, or
bread of wild plants mixed with fish or fish eggs.
As far as their way of life and economy were
concerned, the sedentary fishermen resembled
the Russian Siberian and creole population.

188

Introduced Economies

Intensive Reindeer Herding

This type of economy (type 5) was the only
form of arctic subsistence based entirely on food
production, with an organized resource of large
herds and regular consumption of the products
of the slaughter of domestic reindeer. Since the
late 18th century and early 19th century, this
became the basic mode of subsistence of three
ethnic groups of tundra nomads — the Reindeer
Chukchi, Koryak, and Chuvantsy — sustaining
11,000 to 12,000 people. Having evolved from
a mixed reindeer economy, the large-scale no¬
madic reindeer herding went through several
stages. The period of accumulation of large herds
among the Koryak took place in the late 1 7th
and early 18th centuries, and among the Chukchi
and Chuvantsy in the second half of the 18th
century.

The daily social and working life of the no¬
madic herders was organized around a stable
settlement, the nomadic camp, composed of
three to four families who collectively looked
after the family herds of reindeer. Such nomadic
camps of 15 to 20 people, with a joint herd
averaging between 800 and 1,500 reindeer in
all, made regular migrations within a delimited
territory and were part of a larger social group
of 1 50 to 200 people. The limits of the communal
pastures, the itinerary of the nomadic commu¬
nity, and the nomadic camp were fixed by
customary law of the herders but might vary
slightly with yearly conditions. In some areas a
larger nomadic community, known as the ter¬
ritorial group, occupying the basin of a large
river or some other precisely delimited zone,
existed.

The yearly cycle of the reindeer herders
consisted of regular trips around their territory
with successive use of seasonal types of pasture.
The annual itinerary usually covered 50 to 100
miles, or up to 250 miles at the most.

Most herders moved towards the seacoast or
the lowlands near the sea during the summer
months, where men hunted seals and fished.
Among the inland nomads, the nomadic camp
split in the summer. Women, older people, and
children remained in the settled summer camps
in a river valley, where they fished, while men
herders, carrying minimal equipment, led the
reindeer to their summer pastures in the high¬
lands, returning a few months later. These
nomads lived year-round in a transportable framed
dwelling covered with reindeer hides, called an
iaranga. They traveled on foot in the summer
and on reindeer sledges in the winter.

Practically all the products they needed were
available within their own territory. Exchanges
of surplus reindeer hides and meat gave the
nomads access to sea mammal meat and fat,
thongs, skins, and trade goods. The owners of
large herds frequently subsisted entirely on
herding and exchange. The middle-income and
poorer herders, owning less than 300 to 500
reindeer per family, had to rely more heavily
on maritime hunting, fishing, fur trade, and bird
hunting. All nomadic groups consumed a large
amount of wild plants. Hunting large land ani¬
mals, such as wild reindeer, elk, snow sheep,
and bear, continued to play an important role in
the subsistence of reindeer herders in the 17th
and 18th centuries. But, in the 19th century.

239. Home of a Rich Reindeer
Koryak

AMNH neg. 4157, Jesup Exp.

A reindeer herder's wealth was
measured by the size of his herd. The
chief of the Taigonos Koryak had
5,000 reindeer, twelve herdsmen
with their families, three tents, and
more than 150 sleds. In this photo¬
graph, supply sleds are drawn up
around the tent of a rich herder;
some are used to hold down the rein¬
deer skin tent cover. Rich men were
also central figures in the operation
of the Koryak and Chukchi trade net¬
works.

189

hunting lost its significance, because of over¬
hunting. Consumption of trade goods like flour,
tea, and sugar was minimal up to the mid-20th
century. Dogsled transportation was practically
nonexistent among the reindeer herders.

The difference between the three ethnic var¬
iations of large-scale reindeer herding among
the Chukchi (5a), the Koryak (5b), and the
Chuvantsy (5c) were minimal. All nomadic groups
of northeastern Asia had similar material cul¬

tures and very similar uses of natural resources,
although hunting had a greater significance
among the Reindeer Chukchi, primarily in the
arctic regions, and fishing among the Reindeer
Koryak. There was a category of active trades¬
men among the wealthy and middle-income
herders who exchanged with their poorer coun¬
trymen furs for trade goods and live reindeer
and benefited by selling fur at a high price.

Russian Settlers and Creole Mixed Economy

The mixed trade economy of the Russian settlers
(Starozhili) and creole populations (type 6)
emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries with
the arrival and the constitution of a permanent
Russian population in Northeast Siberia.

At the end of the 19th century, the Russian
and creole (mixed native-Russian) population
was made up of the following groups: the Kolyma
River people (6a), consisting of two groups on
the lower Kolyma and on the middle Kolyma,
each of 500 to 600 people; the Anadyr River or
Markovo people (6b), numbering about 300 to
400 individuals; the Gizhiga River people (6c),
about 500, on the mouth of the river by the
Okhotsk coast; the Kamchadal (6d) of the Okhotsk
coast, being a Russianized Koryak-Even- Yakut
population of 800 living at the mouth of the Taui
River; and the Russian settlers (6e), also called
Russian Siberians or Starozhili, about 2,000
people in the valley of the Kamchatka River and
the eastern and western coasts of the Kamchatka
Peninsula.

Practically all these groups lived in the same
villages with the native population; the Kolyma

and Anadyr people with the Yukaghir, Chu¬
vantsy, and Even; the Gizhiga people and Kam¬
chadal of the Okhotsk coast with the Koryak and
the Even; the Russian settlers with the Itelmen-
Kamchadal.

The Russian Siberian form of subsistence
became more complex at the end of the 17th
century and 18th century, under the strong
influence of the economics of the native popu¬
lation, but adapted to specific Russian economic
traditions. With the decline of fur trade at the
end of the 17th century, and the lesser signifi¬
cance of Russian garrisons and Cossack for¬
tresses in the area in the 18th century, the
Russian settlers of the Siberian Northeast had
to find a local means of existence. They started
to practice intensive river fishing, hunting (pri¬
marily of wild reindeer and birds), and, in the
19th century, garden agriculture.

The Russian Siberians and creole people lived
in relatively large sedentary settlements of a
few hundred inhabitants, as a rule. They were
grouped in village communities with an elected
direction. The land was nominally owned by the

240. Markovo

AMNH neg. 1327, Jesup Exp.
Markovo, on the middle Anadyr
River, was typical of Russian towns
in the administratively remote re¬
gions of eastern Siberia. Bogoras
wrote scathingly of the abuses of
Russian colonial officials, here con¬
cerning the collection of taxes from
the Chukchi: ''I know also of cases
where the chief of the district would
lose at card-playing the whole
amount of the taxes of some commu¬
nity, and then would make the ac¬
counts so complicated that they had
to pay it again the next year as ar¬
rears." (1904—09:715)

190

community. During the year, episodic or sea¬
sonal trips were made from the central settle¬
ment, which was composed of log izbas — tra¬
ditional Russian houses — to the family plots
where people lived in cabins or semisubterra¬
nean houses.

The territory used by the Russian Siberians
was relatively extended and presented a system
of seasonal use of the various types of land
divided in family or individual plots. Annual
moves took place usually within a few dozen
kilometers, a hundred at the most, from the
main settlement. The type of subsistence of the
Russian Siberians was more mobile than that of
the sedentary native population.

The economic year of the Russian Siberians
included a few peaks of economic activity, when
the necessary amount of products was gathered
and huge quantities of food for people and dogs
were stocked for the winter. The basic economic
activity of all these groups was summer fishing
of migratory fish caught with nets or seines or
by native methods using weirs and traps. In
addition, fish was prepared with recipes bor¬
rowed from the native population: iukola, fer¬
mentation, and others. The northern groups, the
Kolyma and Anadyr people, hunted wild rein¬
deer at river crossings during spring or summer
migration, as well. The Kolyma and Gizhiga
people and the Kamchadal of the Okhotsk shore
practiced seal hunting to a certain extent, and
in the 18th century and early 19th century the
Gizhiga people and Kamchadal even joined the
sedentary Koryak on whaling trips. All groups
without exception actively hunted bird and land

Economic Patterns in Alaska

William W. Fitzhugh

Many of the economies utilized by Siberian
peoples were also practiced by native peoples
of Alaska through the end of the 19th century.
The greatest correspondences in economic pat¬
terns between the two regions are found in the
settled maritime and intensive fishing econo¬
mies. These patterns also account for many of
the similarities noted among the cultures of the
North Pacific— Bering Sea region. The greatest
differences between Siberia and Alaska are found
in the land economies and those related to
acculturative influences. The absence in north¬
ern North America of any form of native domestic
animal production (excepting dogs and various
relatively unsuccessful post- 1890s reindeer and
musk-ox experiments) resulted in the persist¬
ence among Alaskan and British Columbian in¬
terior peoples of a form of seminomadic hunting-

animals — bear and fox — and gathered plants and
berries.

To a greater degree than the natives, the
Russian settlers relied not only on production of
consumption goods but also on imported goods,
obtained as periodic state subsidies or by the
Cossacks as payment for their services. All the
Russian settlers were greatly involved in fur
trade, trapping and hunting arctic fox, wolverine,
and wolf in the north, and squirrel, sable, fox,
and marten in the south.

The northern groups on the Kolyma and An¬
adyr rivers were involved in trade with the
Reindeer Chukchi, exchanging imported goods
for fur and reindeer meat and hides. In all these
activities, dogsled transportation, borrowed from
the natives and improved by the Russian settlers,
was an important feature in the settlers' econ¬
omy. Nevertheless, diversification of settler sub¬
sistence types did not guarantee their long-term
stability, and all Russian Siberian and creole
populations suffered periodic famine, massive
loss of dogs, and epidemics. The combination of
all these features produced the specific type of
economy of the Russian settlers and creole
population by merging the native forms of sub¬
sistence with a trade-oriented market economy.

It is as a result of the settlers' population that
a form of production economy spread in the
Siberian Northeast in the late 18th and early
19th centuries that included garden agriculture,
animal milking (which implied a regular harvest
of hay), and use of horses, which was adopted
later by the natives as well.

and-fishing economy that had disappeared even
in remotest northeastern Asia after the intro¬
duction of domestic reindeer in the 1 7th century.

Extending the previous discussion (fig. 233),
we may note the presence of the following
economic types in northwestern North America:
settled maritime hunting (type 1), seminomadic
hunting and fishing (type 3), intensive fishing
(type 4), and introduced economies (type 6).

Settled Maritime Hunting

As in coastal Siberia, the populations of coastal
Alaska and the Northwest Coast derived much,
if not all (in the case of some Aleut groups), of
their food from marine resources. As has been
discussed in the preceding chapters on prehis¬
tory, maritime economies have ancient roots
here, and they continued to be the mainstay of

191

coastal peoples into the 20th century. Comparing
economic types in Alaska and Siberia, some
maritime economy variants are shared by both
regions, while others are not. Along the arctic
coast of Alaska east of Point Hope is found a
North Alaska Coast subtype (lg) that combines
elements of the Arctic Chukotka (la) and Bering
Strait (lb) subtypes, differing only in the rela¬
tively greater emphasis given to caribou hunting
as an important supplement to the annual whale
and walrus hunts that were (and continue to be)
the primary focus of North Alaskan Eskimo life.
Approaching Bering Strait, and especially at
Cape Prince of Wales and on St. Lawrence Island,
this economy merged with the Asian Bering
Strait subtype (lb), with its emphasis on whale
and walrus hunting, caribou being absent. In
these regions, as in the eastern Aleutians and
Kodiak, furs had to be supplied by trade, and
bird-skin clothing often replaced the warm car¬
ibou fur parkas prevalent elsewhere in these
arctic regions. As in northeastern Asia, settled
maritime life depended, in part, on exchange
with interior populations for materials needed
but unavailable in the most specialized maritime
environments. The roots of this specialized mar¬
itime tradition extend back nearly 2,000 years
to the Old Bering Sea cultures.

A West Alaska Coast economic subtype (lh)
existed into the 20th century from Kotzebue to
the Alaska Peninsula, excepting in Bering Strait.
In these regions of relatively shallow seas and
seasonal pack ice, Inupiat and Yupik Eskimo
hunted seals, walrus, and beluga; fished; hunted
birds and collected bird eggs; and, to a lesser
degree, hunted land animals. Large whales did
not frequent these regions, so the intensive
whaling economy that had developed in Bering
Strait and North Alaska was only weakly ex¬
pressed in much of western Alaska.

The maritime economy of the Aleut subtype
(li), also present in some areas of Kodiak Island,
was essentially an ice-free variant of the Bering
Strait economy, with the hunting of whales, sea
lions, fur seals, and birds; fishing; and collecting
of shellfish and seaweed being the major sub¬
sistence activities. Land mammals were few,
and caribou were absent. After Russian contact,
commercial sea otter hunting greatly altered the
traditional Aleut economy, settlement patterns,
and population structure.

The Pacific Eskimo subtype (lj) characterized
the economies of Kodiak, the southern Alaska
Peninsula, and other regions of Cook Inlet and
Prince William Sound. Sharing many resources
with the Aleutians, peoples of this region had
in addition large seasonal salmon runs and,
except on Kodiak Island, significant amounts of
large land game. Variability, for instance be¬
tween regions rich in salmon and others rich in
sea mammals, resulted in local groups' special¬
izing in different resources, resulting in regional
economic diversity as an important feature of
the Kodiak economy, to a greater extent, even,
than in Siberia. In the late prehistoric and early
historic period, whale hunting with aconite poi¬
son was locally important.

For reasons that are not understood, the econ¬
omies of northern Northwest Coast cultures did
not include whaling, even though whales were
important in their mythology and art. And al¬
though smaller varieties of sea mammals were
hunted on an annual basis where available, with
the exception of a major post-contact emphasis
on commercial sea otter hunting, the Tlingit
economy was far less dependent on maritime
hunting than on fishing. However, large sea
mammal hunting, especially the hunting of large
whales, was an important activity in the southern
reaches of the Northwest Coast, among the

241. "Eskimo whaling and walrus
camp, Icy Point, Arctic Ocean,

Alaska. Lookout created of drift
logs."

Henry W. Elliott, 1891 Sl-NAA
7119-5, SI neg. 84-1817
The lookout has probably sighted one
of the herds of walrus that appear in
midsummer as the sea ice breaks up
and the floes move northward into
the Chukchi Sea. Walrus were impor¬
tant quarry for northern maritime
hunters, providing meat, ivory, and
thick, tough skins that were split and
used for umiak and tent coverings. In
a good season, a single community
might take more than 100 walrus.
Teepee-like skin tents were used as
summer dwellings.

192

242. Ivory Drill Bow
Alaskan Eskimo: MAE 571-52
The scene depicted here is a caribou
drive, a method of communal hunting
practiced by the interior North Alas¬
kan Eskimo. Long converging lines of
poles or rock piles set up on the tun¬
dra funneled a caribou herd toward a
large corral, usually placed on the
other side of a stream or pond. Hunt¬
ers closed in behind the herd, waving
pieces of clothing (right). The caribou
could be speared in the water from
kayaks, shot with arrows in the corral
(center), caught in snares at the cor¬
ral exits, or killed with spears (left).

Nootka of western Vancouver Island and the
Makah, Quileute, and Quinault tribes of the
Olympic Peninsula in Washington (subtype Ik).

Seminomadie Hunting and Fishing
Most of the interior groups, including the Nun-
amiut Eskimo of the Alaskan North Slope and
various Athapaskans, relied to one extent or
another on caribou, mountain goat and sheep,
moose, and elk and a variety of other land
animals. Fishing also played an important role
in the life of interior peoples, being most im¬
portant on the Lower Yukon but everywhere
serving as a supplement to land game. Great
variation existed in the types of hunting tech¬
niques utilized, which ranged from communal
drives at water crossings or topographic con¬
strictions, with corral and fence systems in
regions where caribou were plentiful, to individ¬
ual stalking and snaring. Pitfall hunting, such as
was practiced by wild reindeer hunters in north¬
western Russia and northern Scandinavia, was
not used, although snaring was; nor were rights
to hunting locations or drive systems owned by
individuals or corporate groups. Rather they
were the communal property of the regional
group. The North American type of seminomadie
hunting probably once was widespread in Siberia
before domestic reindeer were introduced into
that region. In the absence of domestic animals
the American economic type is radically different
from the Siberian seminomadie herding and
hunting economy (type 2), enough so to be
assigned a separate status (type 3) with Arctic
(e.g., Nunamiut and Seward Peninsula, subtype
3a) and Subarctic (subtype 3b) variants. The
latter subsumes essentially all of the Indian
culture economies of interior Alaska.

Intensive Fishing

As in parts of Siberia, fishing assumed great
importance for many peoples of coastal Alaska
and the Northwest Coast. Second only to settled
maritime economies, fishing was the most wide¬
spread economic pattern in the North Pacific
region. In fact, this pattern takes its most char¬
acteristic form from the Northwest Coast (4e),
where annual salmon and other fish runs in the
rivers, as well as productive ocean fishing, pro¬
vided the economic base for the world's most
complex hunting and gathering cultures.

Intensive fishing, however, is not restricted
to the Northwest Coast, where it was linked with

shellfish and marine fishing. It was locally im¬
portant also in the Gulf of Alaska economies
(4d) of Kodiak, Cook Inlet, and Prince William
Sound and also in the West Alaska Riverine
economies (4c) among Yupiks along the rivers
flowing into the Bering Sea, the Ingalik Indians
of the Lower Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers, and
the Inupiat of the Noatak and Kobuk river re¬
gions.

Introduced Economies

Beginning with the Russian expansion into the
Aleutians, and later into other regions of Alaska
and points south, new forms of economy took
root among native cultures of the region. These
economic elements varied according to patterns
of Russian involvement, which were minimal in
interior Alaska but had major impacts on native
groups in such areas as the Aleutians (6f), Kodiak
(6g), and parts of the Northwest Coast (6h),
especially in Sitka. In addition to the fur trade,
in which sea otter was dominant, Russian contact
resulted in such changes as wage employment,
introduction of agriculture and domestic animals
in some areas, and even total incorporation of
privileged Natives into Russian society. At the
height of the sea otter trade in the early 19th
century, the impressment of Aleut and Kodiak
natives severely disrupted native subsistence
activities, as did also the introduction of infec¬
tious diseases and hostilities of various kinds.
Despite these changes, however, most native
peoples continued to rely on natural resources
for their sustenance and used native hunting
techniques. It was not until the American period
that major economic changes, such as commer¬
cial fishing, cannery operations, the gold rush,
and massive white infiltration, began to affect
native economic life radically, beginning in Pa¬
cific Alaska and spreading gradually into the
Bering Sea and Alaskan interior.

Attempts were made to install a domestic
reindeer economy in the Seward Peninsula in
the 1890s to compensate for the reduction in
marine mammal stocks resulting from intensive
commercial whaling and walrus hunting, but
they failed to have more than a local impact. It
seems unlikely that anything short of Chukchi
colonization of Alaska would have created con¬
ditions for success of a practice so alien to
Alaskan tradition and belief.

193

Dwellings, Settlements, and Domestic Life

Aron Crowell

The houses of the native peoples of Alaska and
Northeastern Siberia may be viewed simply as
technological support systems — life-sustaining
shells enclosing a microenvironment of heat,
light, food, and protection from the elements.
Many successful designs were developed under
the constraints of locally available materials,
weather conditions, and functional requirements
(portability, permanence, size). Yet aboriginal
houses had many functions and cultural dimen¬
sions — they were homes, workshops, social en¬
vironments, sanctuaries from evil spirits, thea¬
ters for religious ceremonies. Charms and ritual
practices protected and sanctified the home. On
a social plane, living arrangements mirrored the
structure of society, so that kinship and marriage,
social schisms and alliances, and differences in
age, sex, and status were all expressed in who
lived together under the same roof or as neigh¬
bors in a village, and in the protocols of sleeping
and seating. This spatial metaphor applied even
to the ancestors, whose continuing importance
to the community was expressed by the prox¬
imity of their graves and memorials to the living
village. Social divisions and status relationships
dictated the spatial arrangement of the dead,
reflecting the continuity of the social order.

Some of the symbolic functions of houses in
communal ceremonies and shamanistic perform¬
ances are detailed elsewhere in this book (de
Laguna p. 61; Fienup-Riordan p. 264; Serov p.
254.) In ceremonies the house or, in the case of
the Eskimo, the ceremonial house ( karigi , qasgiq)
became a nexus between the secular and sacred
worlds. In hunting festivals such as the Eskimo
Bladder Festival, the Chukchi Keretkun cere¬
mony, and the Koryak whale ceremony, animal
spirits were entertained in the house as honored
guests. Passage through house orifices (entrance
tunnels, doorways, smoke holes, the holed Tlin-
git house screen) by the celebrants symbolized
passage between worlds and between different
states of being. The Yupik Eskimo shaman rose
through the skylight of the qasgiq or descended
into the entrance passage to enter the undersea
world of the seal spirits. The house could also
become in effect a representation of the cosmos,
as when a hooped and feathered model of the
sky world was suspended from the ceiling in the
Yupik Eskimo Doll Festival (Yugiyhik) (Nelson
1899:496).

In this essay a selection of both winter and
summer homes, as well as of interior and coastal
types, is discussed to give an idea of the diversity
of dwellings occupied by the native peoples of
the Crossroads area. Included are examples of
the earth or sod-covered semisubterranean houses
of maritime peoples on both sides of Bering
Strait, Asiatic and Alaskan skin tents, and the
aboveground wooden houses of the Nivkhi, Atha-
paskan Indians, and Tlingit. Although snow houses
were the main type of winter dwelling among
the Central Eskimo of Canada, they were seldom
used in Alaska. Rectangular snow houses were
occasionally built as temporary structures by
the North Alaskan Eskimo.

North Pacific peoples dependent on hunting
almost always lived in several different locations
and in several different types of houses over the
course of a year. Seasonal shifts in settlement
were integrated with the annual appearance of
fish and game in specific locations. The Tlingit
Indians, for example, occupied their elaborate
plank houses only during the late fall and winter

243. The Koryak Home and Its
Guardians: The Sacred Fireboard
AMNH neg. 4135, Jesup Exp.;

AMNH 70-2859 (fireboard),
70-2860a,b,c, (spindle, bow)

Bundled in furs, Maritime Koryak
women and children sit in the light of
the blubber lamp inside their winter
house. The home was protected
against evil spirits by many charms,
including the anthropomorphic fire¬
board. Fire was made by the friction
of the spindle whirling on the board.

months, when stores of dried salmon, oil, and

berries permitted them to congregate in the
village and to curtail their subsistence activities
during the ceremonial season. In spring and

194

244. Northern Simplicity: Whale
Bone Bucket

Asian Eskimo: MAE 668-17
This well-made bucket of whale
bone, bent and riveted together and
fitted with a wooden bottom, reflects
both the scarcity of wood in the Ber¬
ing Strait region and the generally
simple style of household implements
made by northern cultures such as
the Chukchi, Asian Eskimo, and
North Alaskan Eskimo.

summer, the families of the village were dis¬
persed at many hunting and fishing sites, living
in simple shacks covered with split boards or
bark. This pattern of winter aggregation and
summer dispersal, associated with shifts in
dwelling type, prevailed among most other groups.
Exceptions occurred where both winter and
summer needs could be met at one location or
covered by storage of surplus food, although
even then a change in dwelling type was typical
(e.g., the North Alaskan Eskimo, below). In
situations where the need for mobility was more
nearly continuous (Siberian reindeer herders,
interior Eskimo, and some Alaskan Indians) year-
round residence in skin tents was typical.

Certain broad trends in house design followed
the arctic-to-subarctic environmental gradient.
The climate control elements of house construc¬
tion (earth insulation, double tent walls, entrance
passages, inner sleeping chambers) became less
critical or were absent in southern structures,
and at the same time wood and grass were more
abundant as materials for constructing and ap¬
pointing the house. Heating methods switched
from arctic oil heat (sea mammal or reindeer fat
melted and burned in stone or clay lamps) to
subarctic wood-burning hearths, although oil
lamps continued to be used for lighting.

A north-to-south trend of increasing house
size is also evident, connected to the environ¬
mental gradient in both direct and indirect ways.
Large houses were easier to build and heat in

the south, because of the greater availability of
wood and warmer temperatures. Yet the social
environment was also critical — larger houses
were occupied by larger households, an expres¬
sion of social complexity that was tied indirectly
to the richer environment and higher population
densities among southern groups.

Lineage-based social organization (division into
clans based on male or female bloodlines) was
predominant south of the Bering Sea, occurring
in the Crossroads area among the Even, Nivkhi,

245. Northwest Coast Elaborations
Tlingit: MAE 337-18 (bowl)

Haida: NMNH 89022 (stone dish)
Tlingit: MAE 2448-26, 2448-28
(paint brushes)

The art of woodcarving and painting
reached a high state of development
among southern Alaskan peoples, in¬
cluding the Northwest Coast Indians.
This bent-comer beaver bowl was ap¬
parently new when collected in the
mid- 19th century, its paint and aba-
lone shell inlays still bright and un¬
worn. The joined comer and red ce¬
dar bottom are fastened with spruce-
root lacing, and opercula decorate the
rim. Ground mineral paints were
mixed in the stone dish: graphite and
magnetite for black, celadonite for
blue, and hematite for red, mixed in
a medium of chewed salmon eggs.
The two paint brushes have bristles
of porcupine guard hairs, and han¬
dles carved to represent a killer
whale and an emaciated, corpselike
figure, perhaps of a shaman.

195

246. Eskimo Graves at Razboinski,
Lower Yukon

SI neg. 6340, E.W. Nelson, 1880
Bering Sea Eskimo cemeteries were a
spatial extension of the village, re¬
flecting the continuing ties between
the living and the dead. Although
carrying on their existence in a sepa¬
rate underground world, the spirits of
the dead were thought to remain de¬
pendent for a number of years on
their living relatives for food, water,
and clothing. These were supplied as
offerings during yearly mortuary
feasts, culminating in a Great Feast
of the Dead. The identities of the de¬
ceased were memorialized by the
placement of personal possessions
(including the oars and paddles visi¬
ble here) by their grave boxes, and
by painting the boxes with totem
marks and images of hunting scenes.

Nanai, Itelmen, Aleut, Pacific Eskimo, Athapas-
kan tribes, Eyak, and Tlingit. Lineage organiza¬
tion was the foundation upon which formalized
cooperative relationships between large num¬
bers of kinsmen were institutionalized. Exclusive
claims to hunting and fishing territories, and to
the predictable and large food surpluses that
they produced, were held by the lineages. The
cohesiveness and corporate nature of the lineage
were often expressed by the coresidence of its
members. Thus 50 or more members of a Nivkhi
patrilineage and their in-laws might occupy a
single underground house (Black 1973), and the
large households of Aleut and Tlingit houses
were composed of many cooperating families
related by matrilineal kinship. Status hierarchies
among individuals and lineages in these groups
were also the primary organizing factor in village
life and in the arrangement of houses in the
settlement.

This organizational complexity stands in con¬
trast to the more flexible, egalitarian, and small-
scale organization of northern groups such as
the North Alaskan Eskimo, Chukchi, and Koryak.
Here the basic economic unit was the family
group, usually consisting of several nuclear fam¬
ilies linked by patrilineal kinship, which lived
and hunted or herded together. Clan organiza¬
tion was nonexistent, and households were com¬
paratively small. Cooperative relationships be¬
tween households were centered around trading
partnerships and subsistence pursuits requiring
group effort, such as whaling among coastal

groups and management of the reindeer herd
among the Reindeer Chukchi and Koryak. Bering
Sea Eskimo social organization was similar to
this pattern except in the striking residential
division between men and women (see below).
There were in addition suggestions of the op¬
eration of patrilineal clan principles among the
Bering Sea Eskimo in the inherited totemic marks
(symbolizing the wolf, gyrfalcon, raven, etc.)
used on hunting weapons and other possessions
(Nelson 1899:322; Lantis 1984b:218). Totemic
marks were also placed on grave boxes in the
cemetery that adjoined the village, to identify
the patrilineage of the deceased. Bering Sea
Eskimo lineages seem to have functioned pri¬
marily in the inheritance of particular forms of
hunting magic and were not ranked or significant
in the economic organization of the village.

The patrilineal clans that were well developed
among the Asiatic Eskimo (including St. Law¬
rence Island) present an exception to both the
general pattern of Eskimo social organization
and to the latitudinal pattern of organizational
complexity under discussion. Asiatic Eskimo clans
were named, exogamous (requiring marriage
outside the clan), and under the leadership of a
senior male of the line. Clan membership deter¬
mined the composition of whaleboat crews, hunt¬
ing rights in certain territories, and residence
location, with segments of the clan living under
the same roof and clan houses being grouped
together in the village. Each clan also had its
own burial area.

196

Semisubterranean Houses of Alaska and
Siberia

North Alaskan Eskimo (Inupiat)

247. North Alaskan Eskimo Winter
House

Bancroft Library neg. 12511
The long entrance tunnel and wood-
lined inner chamber heated with oil
lamps were characteristic of the
North Alaskan Eskimo winter house.
The exterior view was taken at Point
Hope in 1886, showing the tunnel
entrance (left) and meat rack.

The winter house of the coastal Inupiat (fig. 247)
was similar to houses used all the way across
the North American Arctic from northern Alaska
to Greenland. It was a solid, permanent con¬
struction, reflecting the settled life of North
Alaska's whaling villages. Each house even had
a name: "All wet around it,” "The people who
face the sun,” and "People with lots of mice”
were names in use at the old village of Utqiagvik,
at Point Barrow (Spencer 1959). The rectangular
house was constructed of driftwood and whale¬
bones, with the plank floor several feet below
ground level. A thick insulating layer of sod
blocks covered the house, except for a mem¬
brane-covered skylight. The house (iglu) was
entered through a long underground entrance
tunnel, which trapped cold air below the level
of the house floor, preventing it from entering
the inner room of the dwelling. Much activity
took place in the entrance passage and its side

chambers, which included storerooms (also used
as sleeping areas), a frozen meat locker, and a
kitchen area where food was cooked and eaten.
Inside the upper chamber were several oil lamps
for heat and light, a fur-covered sleeping bench,
and drying racks for clothes and boots. In the
heated inner chamber few clothes were worn.
Household furnishings were sparse; there was
no furniture, and utensils such as tubs, bowls,
dippers, and stone-headed mauls for crushing
bone were simple in design and undecorated.

The household was an independent economic
unit, in which the hunting and manufacturing
activities of the men were complemented by the
female activities of sewing clothes, boots, and
boat covers, preparing food and skins, and rais¬
ing the children. Household membership was
quite flexible but typically included 8 to 12
people of several generations who were closely
related by blood and marriage. Status differ¬

ences in North Alaskan Eskimo society were
based primarily on age and sex and were re¬
flected in domestic behavior such as sleeping
arrangements. The house owner and his honored
male relatives slept on the elevated bench, while
women, younger men, and children slept un¬
derneath or were "inhabitants of the entrance
passage.” Whaling, with its requirements for
large amounts of cooperative labor and joint
ritual effort, was an integrating force in the
social system. Umialiks (whaleboat owners) were
important men in the village, and the umialik
and members of his crew lived near each other
and resided in the same large ceremonial house
(karigi) during the whaling season.

197

Bering Sea Eskimo

The semisubterranean winter houses used by
Alaskan Eskimo from Bering Strait south showed
much local variation, but some basic structural
differences from the North Alaskan house are
apparent in all varieties. As shown in the Nunivak
Island example (fig. 249), houses of the Bering
Sea Eskimo were larger, the main room meas¬
uring about 15 feet square, and were entered
through a large wood-roofed entrance passage
at almost ground level. Houses often had an
additional underground entrance tunnel, used in
winter only, which acted as a cold trap. Wide
sleeping benches were built around three sides
of the main room, in contrast to the single
platform in the northern house type. The roof
differed from the central ridgepole construction
of the North Alaskan Eskimo house; it was

gabled, with four interior support posts. On the
barren northern shores of Alaska wood was
scarce and seldom used for cooking or heating,
but among the Bering Sea groups a central
fireplace heated the house, placed below a
square smoke hole in the ceiling. Clay oil lamps
mounted on stands pushed the darkness back
into the corners of the room. Grass was used
for matting on house benches and walls, as well
as for kayak mats, baskets, socks, rope, and
many other applications.

One of the most outstanding features of Bering
Sea Eskimo social organization was the high
degree to which gender roles were formalized
and ritually differentiated (see Fienup-Riordan,
this volume). As might be expected, this prin¬
ciple was reflected in housing arrangements.

248. Ulu (Woman's Knife)

Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 36316
A girl started at a very young age to
help her mother and learn the many
skills involved in food preparation
and the manufacture of clothing. Her
most useful tool was the ulu, like this
small one with walrus ivory handle
and blade of trade iron.

//fi

VlOxpoO -

/J/j

{//A

! ilWu \\\ ;

iSS®

1 te'fG

i ; -•

err

249. Bering Sea Eskimo Winter
House

The large winter houses built by Ber¬
ing Sea Eskimos had gabled roof sup¬
ports, sleeping platforms on three
sides, and a central fireplace with a
smoke hole overhead. They were usu¬
ally occupied only by women and
children; the main residence of the
adult men was the qasgiq, or cere¬
monial house.

250. Toys for Learning

AMNH neg. 1520, Jesup Exp.; Alas¬
kan Eskimo: NMNH 153659 (bow),
45524 (arrow), 260441 (harpoon),
(56045) top, (89800) whizzing stick
A future Koryak hunter takes aim.
Many Eskimo toys (right) helped chil
dren learn adult skills; others were
purely for fun.

198

The large central ceremonial house or qasgiq
was also the primary domicile for the men and
boys of age five and older during the winter
season when the family groups congregated in
the main villages. Here the men ate, slept,
worked, smoked tobacco, played games, and
took sweat baths, and here the boys absorbed
the knowledge and oral traditions that would
serve them in their role as adult hunters. It was
in the spiritual environment of the qasgiq that
hunting implements were fashioned and imbued
with their magic, and where cosmological beliefs
and craftsmanship were combined in the pro-

Koniag and Chugach

The Koniag and Chugach (Pacific Eskimo) of
southern Alaska also lived in Eskimo-type semi¬
subterranean houses, which differed from Bering
Sea houses primarily in the complete lack of
entrance tunnels (the entrance was through a
ground level doorway), lack of sleeping benches
in the main room, and the addition of multiple
side rooms used as sleeping chambers, store-

Aleut

The construction and social aspects of the Aleut
winter longhouse (fig. 251) are discussed in
detail by Lydia Black in this book (p. 53). Eastern
Aleut houses were the largest semisubterranean
houses in the region, ranging from 70 to over
200 feet in length. Aleut houses lacked entrance
passages, which were not necessary in the
relatively mild climate of the region. Extensive
use of grass was made in covering the house
and furnishing it with fine and coarse mats and
baskets. The treeless insular environment some¬
times led to the substitution of whale ribs for
scarce timber in the framing of the house roof.

Entrance into the house was through the
ventilation holes in the roof, via notched log

duction of decorated bentwood bowls, carved
boxes, ivory fittings and amulets, and ceremonial
masks. Women did much of their work in the
home, processing and distributing the products
of the hunt, teaching and caring for children,
sewing carefully tailored garments, boat covers,
and boots, weaving basketry, and carrying out
their roles in the spiritual life of the community.
Girls also began at a young age to absorb the
knowledge they would need as adults and played
with dolls, story knives, and miniature versions
of their mother's tools.

rooms, sweat-bathing lodges, and sometimes as
burial chambers. Although qasgiqs were used
for ceremonies, they were not used as male
residences as among the Inupiat and the Bering
Sea Eskimo. Koniag households were large (18
to 20 persons), and membership was apparently
based on lineage affiliation.

ladders, a trait also seen in the semisubterranean
houses of the Maritime Koryak, Itelmen, coastal
Even, and Nanai. Among the Nanai, entry by
this manner was made only during the Bear
Festival but is suspected to have been in general
use in fairly recent prehistoric times (Jochelson
1907). Ladder entry through the roof has been
considered a significant trait linking southern
Siberian cultures with the Aleutians and even
with prehistoric Northwest Coast houses, a dis¬
tribution implying direct cultural connections
across the Aleutians (Collins 1937).

Estimates by early Russian observers of the
number of people living in the average longhouse
are variable and reflect the rapid decline in

251. Aleut Winter House

The eastern Aleut winter house (fig.
16) was the largest type of semisub¬
terranean dwelling in the North Pa¬
cific region, occupied by many related
families, each with its own lamp and
living compartment. Living spaces
were assigned according to rank by
the lineage leader, who occupied the
most prestigious location at the east¬
ern end of the house. As in the Ko¬
ryak house (fig. 253), entrance was
gained by way of one or several roof
holes equipped with notched ladders.

199

population suffered by the Aleut people after
contact; by the late 18th century households
averaged between 20 and 30 people (Lantis
1970:174). Household membership was deter¬
mined by matrilineal clan affiliation, and the
interior arrangement of families was strictly
ordered by rank.

Koryak

In the Maritime Koryak house (fig. 254), a
mixture of Eskimo-like house features and dis¬
tinctly Asian ones is apparent. The house was
partially underground and constructed on an
octagonal plan, with double walls: an outer layer
of logs and inner paneling of heavy planks, with
grass stuffed between for insulation. Driftwood
was plentiful in this region, and house timbers
were also floated down rivers to the coast from
the interior by the Koryak. The interior dimen¬
sions of the main room might be as large as 40
by 50 feet. The vaulted roof was supported by
four interior posts, as in the southern Eskimo
house. A single wooden sleeping platform for
house guests was another Eskimo feature, al¬
though the resident families of the house slept
along the side walls in sleeping tents reminiscent
of the inner sleeping rooms ( pologs ) of Chukchi
and Koryak reindeer herders' tents. A unique
storm roof in the form of an inverted funnel was
designed to break up the flow of wind and keep
the top of the house from being buried in snow
in the howling fury of Siberian blizzards. The
top of the house was reached by an exterior
ladder, shown in the drawing.

Most houses were occupied year-round, and
different entrances were used according to the
season. The rooftop entrance hole was used in
winter only and also served as a smoke hole for
the wood-burning hearth. The floor below was
reached by a 15-foot-long ladder with cut-out
footholes (fig. 253). The Russian ethnographer
Waldemar Jochelson had a difficult time using
these ladders when living with the Koryak during
the winter of 1899-1900. Rising smoke from
the fire blinded his eyes, his boot-clad feet were
too large for the footholes, and the edges of the
ladders were smooth and slippery with a mixture
of grease and soot from the fire. He dryly advised
that when falling into the house "one should by
no means let go of the ladder, or he will land in
the house on his back." The summer entrance
was an aboveground wooden passageway, sim¬
ilar to the summer entrance of a Bering Sea
Eskimo house. A second winter entrance was a
covered porthole in the top of the summer
passage, which also served as a draft regulator
for the fire. Men considered it beneath their
dignity to go through this entrance, but women,

children, and sexually "transformed" men em¬
ployed it.

The household consisted of a patriarchal fam¬
ily group, numbering from 6 to as many as 40
persons. A concern with spiritual protection of
the home and family against kalas (evil spirits
who brought disease and death) was a prominent
feature of both Chukchi and Koryak domestic
life. The Koryak house was a sanctuary from the
kalas, who came from the darkness to attack the
settlement, attempting to enter the house from
underground through the hearth fire or by creep¬
ing down the ladder. The house ladder itself
was therefore an important guardian charm and
was carved with a small face on its upper end.
The family fire was also a sacred and powerful
family protector. Other guardians of family and
hearth were kept in a shrine by the door and
included the sacred fireboard (fig. 243), the
family drum, the sacred arrow, and wooden
figurines wrapped in grass. The fireboard was
"dressed" in sacrificial sedge grass and "fed"
by smearing fat on its mouth during ceremonies.
Also kept in the shrine were various small
wooden figures made from forked willow
branches, which functioned in the hunting cer¬
emonies that took place in the house and, along
with the fireboard, served to protect and increase
the family's livelihood. The Sun Worm charm
(fig. 338) was hung in the sleeping chamber to
protect women during pregnancy and prevent
sterility. The entire village was guarded by a
charm post, where offerings and sacrifices were
made of grass, dogs, and the blood and fat of
animals killed in the hunt.

252. Aleut Grass Pouches
(Clockwise from upper left) MAE
4104-26, 633-12, 633-14
These Aleut pouches were probably
made for sale to early 19th-century
travelers. Those on the upper left and
upper right are skillfully woven from
finely split grass, both dyed and in
natural shades. The bottom pouch is
blue-painted linen, overlaid with thin
strips of painted skin, gutskin thread
and dyed hair embroidery, yarn
fringes, and long fine hair.

200

253. Koryak Winter House Interior
AMNH neg. 4131, Jesup Exp.

This photograph shows details of
Koryak house construction and post¬
contact domestic life. The sacred lad¬
der descends from the soot-encrusted
ceiling to the hearth below, where
two women sit with a Russian copper
trade kettle. A metal washtub, pack¬
ing crates, and other trade goods are
also visible, while fur clothing and
boots hang from a drying rack.

254. Maritime Koryak Winter House
The houses of the coastal Koryak
were substantial log structures en¬
tered via the rooftop smoke hole in
winter and through an above-ground
entrance passage in summer. The en¬
trance passage faced the sea and was
kept open during the summer to al¬
low free access to the visiting spirits
of sea mammals. The top of the
house was surrounded by a funnel-
shaped construction that kept it from
being drifted over during blizzards.

201

Asian and Alaskan Skin Tents

Skin tents provided a versatile architectural
solution to the problem of staying warm yet
mobile. Skin tents were used year-round by
Asian reindeer-herding groups in the Crossroads
area, and their use extended far to the west in
Siberia. In Alaska, skin tents were used by the

caribou hunters of North Alaska throughout the
year. Skin-covered, domed lodges were used as
winter houses by the Kutchin and other Atha-
paskan groups. Conical skin tents were used on
hunting trips and as summer residences among
the Bering Sea Eskimo and coastal Inupiat.

255. Summer Camp at Cape
Lisbume

SI neg. 3855, E.W. Nelson, 1881
Light tents were used for summer
travel and hunting along the coast;
seals and an umiak are shown spread
out on the beach.

256. North Alaskan Eskimo Skin
Tent

North Alaskan summer tents were
covered with reindeer skins or seal¬
skins until the 1850s, when replaced
by canvas sailcloth obtained from
American whalers through trade and
shipwrecks.

Even

Sergei A. Arutiunov (p. 38) considers the chor-
ama-diu skin tent of the nomadic hunting and
herding Even (fig. 257) to be a transitional form
between the simple conical tent (a North Alaskan
example is shown in fig. 256) and the iaranga
tent of the Reindeer Koryak and Chukchi. The
chorama-diu framework had a lower portion that
formed a vertical wall, giving it a distinctive
shape. The covering of the tent was made
alternatively of reindeer suede, fish skin, or larch
bark, depending on the season and location of
the group. Although such a tent had the advan¬
tages of portability on the Evens' pack reindeer
and ease of erection, it would not have been
adeguate for the severe arctic conditions to
which the Koryak and especially the Chukchi
iaranga was subjected.

257. The Even Tent
The Even required portable shelter
year-round to carry out their nomadic
herding, hunting, and fishing way of
life. The skin tent covering could be
easily removed and packed on the
backs of reindeer when camp was
moved.

202

259. Toys

Chukchi: MAE 434-83 (ball);

Tlingit: NMNH 209567; Chukchi:
MAE 434-80d (dolls)

Chukchi kick ball games were played
by both children and adults. A Chuk¬
chi girl kept her dolls after marriage
to hasten conception. Tlingit dolls
with marble heads were made by
Tlingit mothers for their daughters.

Chukchi and Koryak

The iaranga used by Chukchi and Koryak rein¬
deer-herding groups was an adaptation of the
Even-type skin tent to conditions of high winds
and severe winter cold (fig. 258). It was used,
however, in all seasons. An iaranga stood 10 to
15 feet high and was between 15 and 25 feet
in diameter. The poles were lashed together in
a strong but elastic framework, and the entire
structure was secured against strong winds by
taut lashings tied to large rocks and loaded
sledges. The cover might also be deliberately
frozen to the ground by pouring water around
its base. The distinguishing feature of the iaranga
was the construction of boxlike inner sleeping
chambers (called pologs). Only one polog was
used in Chukchi tents and was placed against
the back wall. Two or three sleeping chambers
were typically required by the larger Koryak
household, placed around the sides and back of
the tent. The main room of the tent remained
unheated and was used mainly for storage and
cooking over a wood fire. (By way of comparison,
the principle of heating only a small inner room
to save fuel was not employed by Alaskan Eskimo
caribou hunters, who instead used a double tent
cover during the winter. The dead air space
between the covers increased the thermal effi¬
ciency of the house.) The close confines of the
polog were easily heated to a high temperature
by a single oil-burning pottery lamp and the
body heat of the occupants, who often removed
most of their clothes for comfort. Waldemar
Bogoras commented on the close quarters of
Chukchi tent life;

258. The Iaranga: Inside the Sleeping
Chamber and Exterior View
Bogoras 1904-09, Plate XIV; St. Law¬
rence Island Eskimo: NMNH 280117
(leather briefs)

Little clothing was worn inside the
boxlike pologs (inner sleeping cham¬
bers) of the iaranga tents used by the
Chukchi, Koryak, and Asiatic Eskimos
of the Chukchi Peninsula and St.
Lawrence Island; they could become
swelteringly hot from the heat of a
single oil lamp. Both men and women
would strip down to tasseled leather
briefs like this men's pair.

203

The Chukchee sleeping-room . . . affords little room
for the stranger. A few extra men crowd it consid¬
erably, and are compelled to sit crouching in the
strangest positions while eating or conversing. When
there are a number of guests, they can only thrust
their heads in, and must keep the rest of their bodies
outside of the room, lying flat on their stomachs, and
raising themselves up, like so many seals, from under
the tent-cover, which is fastened around their shoul¬
ders (Bogoras 1975:173).

The Chukchi tent and camp could be read as a
social map upon which were delineated simple
status distinctions based on age, sex, and wealth
(in reindeer). Within the sleeping chamber, the
senior male of the Chukchi household and his
wife slept on the lefthand side (the "master's
place"), while younger members of the house¬
hold, guests, and strangers slept on the right.
Each Chukchi nuclear family had its own tent,
and a camp rarely contained more than three
tents of related families, usually headed by
brothers, cousins, or a father and his grown
sons; the total population of a camp rarely
exceeded 15 people. The owner of the herd, or
the majority of it, was the Master of the Camp,
whose family tent was always larger and always
sited at the northeast end of the line of tents in
a tundra camp. The Master of the Camp exerted
his decision-making authority in matters of man¬
agement of the herd and in deciding appropriate
times for sacrifices and ceremonies. Koryak
camp organization was similar but with larger
herds and camp populations.

The central focus of economic and ceremonial
concern among reindeer herders was the welfare
of their animals. The Reindeer Koryak sacred
fireboard (fig. 260) was the deity of the family
fire, protecting home and hearth against evil
spirits. It was also the Master of the Herd, who
along with his charm assistants kept away the
wolves, prevented sickness, and prevented the
animals from straying. Fire was thought to have
been the progenitor of the first reindeer (Jo-
chelson 1975:87), and in the ceremony welcom¬
ing the return of the herd from summer pastures
a new fire was started with the fireboard, and
burning brands from it were thrown at the
approaching herd to greet them.

used a variant of the iaranga. Whalebones were
often substituted for wooden poles in the lower
part of the tent framework, a wall of sod was
added around the bottom of the tent (reflecting
greater permanence of the house location and
the less nomadic lifestyle of coastal inhabitants),
and walrus skins were used as flooring. The tent
cover was made of reindeer skins traded from
the Reindeer Chukchi. Coastal iaranga house¬
holds were several times larger than the house¬
holds of the Reindeer Chukchi. As among the
North Alaskan Eskimo, the organization of Mar¬
itime Chukchi villages was based on the eco¬
nomic cooperation and spatial proximity of boat
crew members and the Boat Master (equivalent
to the North Alaskan umialik). There was no
equivalent, however, of the Eskimo karigi (cer¬
emonial house). In the summer, walrus skin-
covered tents were pitched nearby in the same
settlement. Archeological evidence indicates that
the Asian Eskimo formerly used wood and whale¬
bone-framed underground houses like those of
the Inupiat Eskimo of Alaska prior to adopting
the iaranga from the Chukchi at the end of the
19th century.

260. Master of the Herd
Reindeer Koryak: MAE 6750-16a

In addition to its sacred role as
source of the hearth fire and spiritual
guardian of the family against evil
spirits, the fireboard also protected
the economic welfare of the house¬
hold. Thus the Maritime Koryak fire¬
board was thought to help in the
hunt for sea mammals, while the
Reindeer Koryak fireboard, known as
the Master of the Herd, protected the
reindeer from disease and predators.
The charms tied to this fireboard
with sinew and thongs include little
forked figures representing "boys" or
"herdsmen," a wooden spoon used in
sacrifices, a small wooden image of a
watchdog, beads, and a divining
stone with a hole through it. A larger
legless animal image {right) is the
wolf, which is thus kept near the
guardian figure and away from the
herd. The fireboard was kept with
other charms in the family shrine,
and periodically "clothed" in a grass
collar, and "fed" by rubbing grease
on its mouth.

204

261. Nivkhi Summer House on the
Amur River

Photo: AMNH, Jesup Exp.

The Nivkhi occupied large subterra¬
nean winter houses, shifting resi¬
dence in the summer to log struc¬
tures built on piles at good fishing
and sea mammal hunting locations.
The social and religious symbolism
connected with Nivkhi houses was
highly elaborate (Black 1973). In
building a new house, shamanisitic
divination was important for choosing
a spiritually propitious location.

262. Athapaskan Indian House

Pole-framed structures covered with
spruce or birch bark and insulated
with moss were built as multi-family
communal houses by many Athapas¬
kan groups, including the Tanana and
Ahtna. These were the most perma-
nant dwellings constructed by these
seminomadic hunters and fishermen.

263. Gambling Sticks
Tlingit: NMNH 75423
Gambling was universally popular on
the Northwest Coast. In one game,
rods such as this set in polished
hardwood with abalone shell insets
were shuffled under a loose bundle of
shredded cedar bark, and the bundle
then divided. The players then had to
bet on which bundle contained a spe¬
cific marked rod.

Wooden Houses

Several varieties of aboveground wooden houses
were used by native peoples in the southern
part of the Crossroads area. Some Bering Sea
Eskimo erected log houses for summer use, with
front and rear walls made from vertical upright
planks; many Athapaskan Indian groups built
rectangular pole structures for winter and sum¬
mer use covered with strips of birch bark (fig.
262); and several basic types of wooden struc¬
tures used in Siberia included the Nivkhi summer
plank house raised on stilts (fig. 261).

The most substantial and decoratively elabo¬
rate wooden structures were the large winter
plank houses of the Northwest Coast. Northwest
Coast houses and villages provide an especially
complex example of the spatial expression of
social structure. Figure 264 depicts the Whale
House of the Tlingit Ganaxtedi Clan at the village
of Klukwan in southeastern Alaska (Emmons
1916), and the discussion that follows addresses
the houses and villages of the Tlingit (Shotridge
and Shotridge 1913; De Laguna 1972).

The matrilineal clan system of the Tlingit is
described in this volume by Frederica de Laguna
(p. 60). There were four nested organizational
levels. At the highest level was the division of
society into halves (moieties), the Ravens and
the Wolves. Each moiety was in turn divided
into named clans, each clan was made up of
several lineages (local divisions of the clan,
usually spread out between several neighboring
villages), and each lineage was composed of a
number of large communal households. Status

205

264. Tlingit Winter House
This drawing of the Whale House at
Klukwan is cut away to reveal the
elaborate interior carvings on the
house screen (depicting the Rain
Spirit crest) and roof support posts.
The undecorated exterior of the
house is covered in broad planks of
hemlock wood, cut in the dense
Pacific coast forests that surround the
village.

distinctions were drawn at all levels, so that
every Tlingit individual had a rank within the
household, each house was ranked within the
clan, and each clan ranked within the moiety.
This organizational system was mirrored in the
layout of a Tlingit village. The houses were
arranged in a long line along the shore of a
protected cove or riverbank, the houses of each
clan clustered together, and the house clusters
of the most prestigious clans located at the
center of the village.

All of the subsidiary structures of the village
reflected the same organization. In southern
Tlingit villages totem poles stood before each
house, portraying the crest animals and history
of the lineage. Along the beach were the canoe
shelters, fish-drying racks, and smokehouses
owned by each house; behind the houses were
caches where provisions were kept, in addition
to bathhouses, and huts where women were
confined at childbirth. The grave houses, which
held the ashes of the dead, ran along behind the
village or stood at one end, arranged by the
same principles of status and affiliation as the
houses of the living. These arrangements ex¬
pressed the whole generational cycle of birth
and death and the integration within the house¬
hold of all aspects of production and reproduc¬
tion. The grave houses of shamans, guarded by
tall carved guardian figures and charged with

latent spiritual power, occupied a separate area
hidden among the trees, reflecting the separa¬
tion of the shaman from the rest of society in
both life and death.

The house was a large wooden structure
sometimes over 50 feet square, with a single
frontal entrance facing the water. It was framed
in spruce and planked with easily split hemlock;
the houses of wealthy clans were finished inside
with red cedar. Four major house posts held up
the roof, carved and painted to represent the
totemic crest animals of the clan and to represent
significant events in the oral tradition of the
lineage. Similar themes were sometimes de¬
picted on house front paintings. Above the
central hearth was a large square hole that
admitted light and allowed smoke to exit, usually
fitted with a movable wind screen used to adjust
the ventilation of the house. As shown in figure
264, the interior floor was excavated to create
two rising tiers that surrounded the sunken
hearth area. The wood-planked upper tier was

265. Grease Bowl
Haida: NMNH 23409
The social and ceremonial elaboration
of the Northwest Coast was sup¬
ported by abundant food resources.
Animal oils — of eulachon fish,
salmon, sea lion, and whale — were
easily stored and a basic foodstuff.
One of the principle sources of oil
was the harbor seal, which was also
the most commonly used theme for
carved bowls used to contain oil.

Here the fat creature is poised with
back arched as if stretching on the
beach or on an ice floe.

206

266. House Screen

Haida: CMC VII-B-1527
This cedar plank partition is carved
and painted with a crest of the Haida
Eagle House at Howkan, in Southeast
Alaska. It would have screened off
the chiefs apartment at the end of
the house. Exit through the belly of
the screen's central figure symbolized
rebirth.

267. Spoons

Tlingit: NMNH 60144, 60147
Tlingit spoons included large painted
ladles (upper) as well as carved soap¬
berry spoons (lower). The ladle is
painted with black formlines in the
image of a killer whale, identifiable
by the large, perforated dorsal fin
sweeping back from the head. The
soapberry, native to the dryer parts
of the coast and interior plateau, can
be whipped in water to a stiff pink
froth, considered a delicacy and
prized for feasts. The carved design
on this paddlelike spoon for eating
the froth represents a fish, probably a
salmon. A tiny human face on the
back of the head may be Salmon Boy,
who was taken away by the salmon
and who returned to teach humans
how to properly treat the fish so that
they would return each year to bene¬
fit mankind.

divided into family apartments by walls, small
decorated screens, or stacks of piled belongings,
and the lower tier was primarily a sitting bench.

Tlingit households ranged in size from about
25 to 50 people, including male members of the
same clan (related to each other as brothers,
maternal uncles, nephews, or cousins), their
wives (always from a clan of the opposite moiety),
unmarried women and girls, and young children.
A certain number of slaves would also be resi¬
dent, depending on the wealth of the household.
This large group of people functioned as the
basic social and economic unit of Tlingit society.
Most property was held communally; fishing,
hunting, berry picking, and trading were joint
activities of the household; and food was cooked
and eaten commensally.

As we have seen, the division of house inte¬
riors into socially distinct spaces on the basis of

status was a cultural universal among North¬
eastern Siberian and Alaskan cultures. The place
of honor was always the location farthest from
the door. Among the Tlingit the end apartment
belonged to the house chief ( yitsati ), families of
lower rank ranged along the sides of the house,
and slaves were "dwellers by the door," on call
to fetch water or wood or to carry out other
tasks at the command of the true "house peo¬
ple." An elaborately carved screen separated
the apartment of the yitsati, an inner sanctum
in which were kept the valuable crest objects of
the house. Entrance into the apartment was
through a hole in the belly of the crest animal
depicted on the screen, so that the yitsati sym¬
bolically went into the womb of the crest animal
and was unified with it until he reemerged or
was "reborn" into society again (Jonaitis
1986:133).

207

House Design and Society: 15,000 Years of Change

This survey demonstrates some of the ways in
which houses, as well as their contents and their
arrangement into villages, reflect environment,
economy, and social structure. From an arche¬
ological perspective, houses in the North Pacific—
Bering Sea region show a long history of devel¬
opment reflecting general processes of social
and economic change. The earliest houses were
the tents of Ice Age big-game hunters, known
from west of our area at sites such as the 1 5,000-
year-old Malta site on the Belaya River (Gera¬
simov 1964). Malta houses were constructed
with the products of the hunt; over excavated
foundations rose a mammoth tusk and caribou
antler framework, covered with skins. The in¬
terior contained the separate hearths of up to
three families, probably representing a cooper¬
ative family group comparable to the Chukchi,
Koryak, or Alaskan Eskimo household. Tool pat¬
terning on the Malta house floors suggests that
male and female work areas were on opposite
sides of the hearths.

The Paleoarctic hunting groups that spread
into Northeastern Siberia and Alaska at the end
of the Ice Age (after 9500 b.c.) occupied skin-
covered structures that had a shallow excavated
floor and a single central hearth. A rectangular
house with a short entryway was excavated in
Level VI at the Ushki site on the Kamchatka
Peninsula and may have been either skin or sod
covered (Dikov 1977). Variations on the skin-
covered tent remained in use into historic times
throughout Alaska and Siberia by interior hunt¬
ers and herders, whose nomadic way of life
reguired an easily moved dwelling suitable for
small households and year-round occupation.
Small conical tents were used as summer dwell¬
ings or portable hunting shelters by coastal
groups.

The process of adaptation to coastal environ¬
ments, which intensified over the last 6,000
years in both Siberia and Alaska, led to the
development of larger and more permanent
dwellings that were ancestral to the winter
houses discussed above. On the southern coast
of Alaska, small semisubterranean earth-covered
structures without entrance passages were in
use by 4000 b.c.. Aleut houses at 2000 b.c. were

domed underground structures that probably
had roof entrances and eventually developed
into the large communal longhouses known from
the historic period. Between 2500 b.c. and a.d.
0 the coastal semisubterranean house with a
central hearth, interior support posts, and shal¬
low entrance passage evolved along the western
coast of Alaska and in Northeast Siberia (Ack¬
erman 1982), ancestral to the Bering Sea Eskimo
winter house. This house type was used by
people of the Denbigh and Norton culture phases.
Other archeologically known coastal house de¬
signs from the second millennium b.c. did not
continue into the historic period. These include
the large multiroomed houses of the Old Whaling
culture (1400 b.c.), which had side rooms and
shallow entrance passages, and the large oval
houses of the Choris phase (1600—500 b.c.). The
North Alaskan Eskimo house, with its long, deep
entrance tunnel and absence of a hearth, clearly
had its roots in the early Eskimo cultures of
Bering Strait after a.d. 0: Old Bering Sea, Birnirk,
Punuk, and Thule. Ipiutak houses (a.d. 0-900)
were more clearly related to the Bering Sea
Eskimo type; they lacked entrance passages but
had sleeping platforms around three sides.

These house types represented a large labor
investment and were permanent dwellings de¬
signed to be used for many years. They were
thus suitable to a more sedentary way of life
based on the abundant and stable food resources
of the coast. This stability is reflected in long¬
term trends of increasing population density and
house size among the coastal populations of
Alaska and Siberia. A well-documented case is
St. Lawrence Island (Collins 1937), where the
dramatic increase in house size from the Old
Bering Sea to the Punuk phase is thought to be
based on the high productivity and new orga¬
nizational requirements of large-scale whaling.
Dramatic increases in house size over time also
occurred among the southern cultures of the
Beringian region (Aleut, Koniag, Chugach, Tlin-
git) as the productivity of the coastal environ¬
ment came to be fully exploited through new
technologies and the emergence of complex
forms of social organization.

208

Needles and Animals: Women's Magic

Valerie Chaussonnet

It would be against the dignity of the man
if a woman paints. ... If we want the women
to do something like that, we will let them
sew it onto the fur clothing (a Kuskokwim
man quoted in Himmelheber 1938,
cited by Ray 1981:40).

268. Koniag Birdskin Coat
Koniag Eskimo: MAE 2888-84
Hundreds of iridescent neck skins of
the pelagic cormorant were used to
fabricate this spectacular ceremonial
garment (cf. fig. 2). Its beauty is en¬
hanced by red-and-white tufted tas¬
sels of dyed skin and gut, long fine
hairs and strands of yam worked into
seams, delicate white cormorant flank
feathers, tiny embroidered seam de¬
signs, a trade cloth collar, and white
fur trim.

Today, the traditional native clothing of the North
Pacific has been totally or partially replaced by
manufactured European-style clothes. Sewing
traditions, however, are still alive, and the elab¬
orate garments that impressed the early traveler
and that served to - visually differentiate one
group from the other (fig. 72) are still worn on
occasion. In the modern context of rapidly di¬
minishing ethnic distinctiveness, clothing is worn
and exhibited as a flag, a marker of ethnic
identity. But even before the adoption of Euro¬
pean-style clothing and the consequent trans¬

formation of clothing into ethnic costume, women
as seamstresses played an extremely important
role in the expression of cultural values and
meaning. While appropriating some stylistic and
technical elements from neighboring peoples,
the women of each group cut and embroidered
clothing according to distinctive cultural aes¬
thetics, recognizable throughout their material
culture. Apart from their role as the guardians
of sewing traditions, seamstresses expressed
through clothing the magical beliefs and the
symbolic values of the group. Social positions

209

within the group were expressed by character¬
istics of clothing that marked gender, age, and
status.

The link between clothing and identity can be
understood in reference to the ideology of spir¬
itual transformation. In Northeastern Siberia and
northwestern North America, people, animals,
and spirits were subject to metamorphosis. No
being had a single, invariable shape. Garments,
like masks, could effect or make reference to
spiritual transformation. Cosmological links be¬
tween humans and the animal world were also

Style and Function

The strength of stylistic tradition and its rela¬
tionship to group identity were apparent in
examples of garments poorly adapted to the
physical environment and climate. The Even,
recent immigrants to the North, made Chukchi-
or Koryak-style parkas for long sledge journeys
but retained their traditional thin, tight, and
open garments for everyday wear. Moreover,
the Yukaghir, under Even influence, adopted this
style of clothing, even though it was much more
suitable for the warmer climate of the southern
taiga than for the severe climate of the northern
tundra (Jochelson 1908:388).

Although Chukchi and Koryak male clothing
was functionally outstanding, typical female
clothing demonstrated some strongly nonfunc¬
tional attributes. The combination suit, or khonba
(figs. 36 and 271), typical of Chukchi, Asiatic
Eskimo (including St. Lawrence Island), Koryak,
and, in the past, Itelmen women, was cumber¬
some and impractical. Waldemar Bogoras ( 1 904—
09:245) reported that young women complained
about its shortcomings. He described the khonba
sleeves as "very full, and so long that they
interfere with the work of the woman." Normal
tasks often required that one or both arms be
removed from the sleeves. The sleeves often
slipped down by themselves, because of the
deep neck opening. Neck and shoulders were
thus exposed to the cold, especially among
Chukchi and Eskimo women, who, unlike Koryak
women, did not wear a parka over the combi¬
nation suit. In winter, however, the khonba was
worn in two layers, with the fur of the inner
garment against the body.

As a whole, though, seamstresses in Alaska
and Northeastern Siberia were remarkably in¬
genious in using local resources to create gar¬
ments appropriate to the local climate and way
of life. White people often took advantage of
indigenous clothing, especially in the most rig¬
orous regions of the North Pacific and Bering
Sea. Bogoras (1904—09:234) noted that ''the
style of clothes used by Chukchee and Koryak

evident in the requirement that the clothing be
carefully and beautifully made to please the
spirits of the animals upon whom the group
depended for survival.

Social and spiritual elements were thus com¬
bined with technological requirements in the
design and manufacture of a piece of clothing.
The effectiveness of a garment must be partially
gauged in social, magical, and aesthetic terms,
which in some cases outweighed the practical
function of the clothing.

269. Snow Beater
Chukchi: MAE 434-7
Snow was beaten off fur clothing be¬
fore one entered the warmth of the
house to remove snow which would
otherwise melt and wet the gar¬
ments. The hunting scene on this ant¬
ler snow beater is a reminder of the
link between furs and the hunting of
game. The triangular motifs on the
handle are common on Chukchi and
Koryak clothing (fig. 293). On the
knob of the handle is carved the head
of an unidentified spirit or mythical
being — it has a human face but the
horns of a mountain ram.

men in winter is admirably adapted to its pur¬
pose. It therefore prevails among most of the
tribes of northeastern Asia, including the Rus¬
sians.” Murdoch (1892:109) recalled that after
one season of wearing ready-made shirts and
coats obtained from ships' crews, the Point
Barrow Eskimo packed these away and rarely
wore them again, and then only in summer,
since their own clothing was better suited to the
environment. Waldemar Jochelson (1908:588)
observed that "excepting those entirely Rus¬
sianized, very few Koryak wear chintz or calico
shirts under the fur clothing."

270. Beaded and Embroidered Apron
Even: AMNH 70-5601f
Changing decorative styles are syn¬
thesized in this garment, a typical
Even woman's reindeer-skin apron,
worn in combination with her open
front coat (fig. 34). Russian trade
beads complement the traditional
panel and border embroidery of dyed
reindeer mane or moosehair. The
breast panel has been cut from an
old garment and reused: its worn
beads are types that first became
available in the earliest days of Rus¬
sian contact.

210

Most clothing from the northern parts of the
North Pacific region was made from reindeer
fur, which was warmer than any other because
of the insulating nature of its hollow hair. Insu¬
lation and preservation of body heat, especially
during the winter months, were increased by
wearing two layers of fur garments of the same
cut. This practice applied not only to Koryak and
Chukchi clothes but also to the Northern Alaskan

and Bering Sea Eskimo parka and pants. Rein¬

272. Infant's Combination Suit
Chukchi: MAE 395-11
This tiny combination suit has a flap
between the legs for changing the
infant's moss or soft hair diaper.
Suits made for toddlers and older
children had hand and foot openings
and were worn with separate boots.

reindeer for the inner layer of the khonba (Pryt-
kova 1976:40, citing Merck). It was also used
by the North Alaskan Eskimo for parkas and by
the Yukaghir for a rough type of winter coat.
During the summer months the tattered remains
of winter clothing, the fur of which had been
damaged by spring rains, were worn. For this
reason, the appearance of Northeastern Siberi¬
ans in summer was, in Bogoras's words, "ex¬
ceedingly shabby" (1904—09:248). The Even
made summer coats by shaving the remaining

271. Reindeer Koryak Mother and
Children in Fur Clothing
AMNH neg. 1528, Jesup Exp.

Koryak women wore the khonba, a
one-piece combination suit with wide
sleeves, similar to the child's fur suit
except for its open neck and lack of
hood. Layers of clothing were usually
doubled in winter. The mother here
wears an outer hoodless parka over
her khonba. Her parka and that of
the children have a front "bib" flap
(p. 19). The little boy at left is wear¬
ing his parka hair-side-in.

deer, killed in the summer (rather than in the
fall, when their fur was too thick for clothing),
provided a soft and much lighter skin than
mountain sheep or bear. Mountain sheep, how¬
ever, was often used in the past instead of

fur off worn-out winter coats.

Dehaired sealskin was used everywhere for
boot soles. For this reason, and since reindeer
fur was much warmer than sealskin for winter
clothing, maritime peoples exchanged sea mam¬
mal products and reindeer fur with interior
peoples. Maritime groups used sealskin to make
summer pants. Sealskin was not warm, but it
was waterproof, whereas reindeer fur had to be
protected from water to retain its insulating
qualities (fig. 208). Alaskan, Aleut, and, to a
certain extent, Chukotkan peoples made a re¬
markable type of waterproof garment from sea
mammal or bear intestine (gutskin), which they
wore by itself or over fur clothing. Interior
groups, especially the Even and Yukaghir, made
waterproof garments for the warmer seasons
from the hide of that part of the tent that had
been cured in the smoke of the hearth. As seen
in the exhibition, the skin of a great number of
other animal species, including fish and birds,
was also used. Their importance varied locally.

It is in the cut and design, rather than in the
material, that tradition might conflict with func¬
tional requirements. The wide sleeves of the
khonba are only one example of this. In another,
Donald W. Clark ( 1 984: 1 94) noted for the Koniag
and Chugach Eskimo that "to work while wearing
a parka, people inserted their arms through slits
at the side rather than through the virtually
nonfunctional [very narrow] sleeves."

The diffusion of such traditions, as evidence
of past cultural connections between the Old
and the New Worlds, was what Gudmund Hatt,
whose work was contemporary to the Jesup
Expedition, had in mind when he established a
typology of northern clothing. Hatt's typology
(1969) was based on the clothing patterns and
the development from simple original forms into
more elaborate types. He divided northern cloth¬
ing into two complexes: the moccasin-snowshoe-
cloak complex, and the sandal-boot-poncho com¬
plex. The former, designated an inland culture,
was typical of Even, Nanai, Yukaghir, and Atha-
paskan types of clothing. The latter, considered
the earlier of the two, was typical although not
limited to the coast-culture area, including the
American and Asian Eskimo, Koryak, and Chuk¬
chi.

The khonba, according to Hatt, was developed
as a garment for Koryak, Chukchi, and Asiatic
Eskimo women from a common northern chil¬
dren's garment of the same cut as the khonba,
but provided with a hood. For him, one-piece

211

clothing such as the khonba originated as an
animal costume, similar in conception to the
way a bearskin, for example, might have been
"put on, as far as possible, in the manner in
which the animal had worn it,” i.e., with the
back on the back, and the front legs as the
sleeves (Hatt 1969:95, 97). In fact, the legs of
the khonba were often made from reindeer leg
skin. This allowed Koryak seamstresses, in par¬
ticular, to combine aesthetic and symbolic ele¬
ments by alternating dark and light vertical
bands of skin (fig. 346). The pieces in the
exhibition show that the shape of the original
animal skin had a great influence on the cut and
design of clothing.

Animals, Seamstresses, and Hunters

Animal skin, transformed into a second skin for
humans by the work of the seamstresses, still
maintained its animal identity. From the killing
of an animal through the tanning, cutting, and
sewing of its skin into a piece of clothing, the
qualities and characteristics attributed to it in
life were maintained and passed on to the wearer
of the finished garment. This important spiritual
principle linked animals, hunters, and seam¬
stresses together in an intricate and circular set
of relationships. The continuity of animal identity
is made explicit in Bogoras's comment, for ex¬
ample, that in Chukchi beliefs "skins ready for
sale have a 'master' of their own. In the night¬
time they turn into reindeer and walk to and
fro.” In Siberia and Alaska, amulets made from
animal skin were believed to turn into the original
animal when needed. Properties of other animal
parts could demonstrate this principle as well.
Baleen used in making the wooden hunting hat
of the Nunivak Island kayaker, for example,
allowed him to pass safely through the currents
like a whale, just as the wood of the hat or a
grass attachment, as land elements, guaranteed
his safe return to the shore (Lydia Black, personal
communication).

A direct consequence of the continuum be¬
tween live animals and animal products for
clothing was that women had to observe certain
rules in their art and show respect for the
material, as did the hunters of the game. Eskimo
women were forbidden to sew while men were
hunting important game, for fear this work might
offend the animals. In addition, the clothing they
produced had to be beautiful, with regular and
perfect stitches (see Fienup-Riordan essay on p.
263 in this volume) so that the hunter wearing
the garment would please the game. North
Alaskan men therefore dressed in fine new
clothing for whaling. Seamstresses of the North
Pacific dressed not only hunters but also their

watercraft and sea otter charms, which was a
major responsibility and, therefore, was sur¬
rounded by ritual precautions. On Nunivak Is¬
land, for example, while cutting the sealskins
for the kayak, women wore waterproof parkas
that were believed "to prevent any evil influence
from entering or afflicting the new kaiaks" (Cur¬
tis 1930:13). Aleut women were careful not to
let any of their hair be caught in the seams of
the kayak, and they wiped their hands on a
special bundle of grass to avoid polluting the
kayak and thereby scaring the game away or
drowning the kayaker (Robert-Lamblin 1 980: 1 0).

Concern with female pollution of the hunting
material explains why the manufacture of thong
among the Chugach Eskimo "was the only kind
of skin working in which the men took part”
(Birket-Smith 1953:74). This same fact was re¬
corded by Jochelson (1908:629) among the Ko-

273. Needlecases
(Clockwise from upper left) North
Alaskan Eskimo: NMNH 33700.
Chukchi: MAE 688-6. Oroch: 138-42.
Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 176229.
Chukchi: MAE 666-15b
Two types of needlecases were
used — tubes with stoppered ends
(Oroch and Bering Sea Eskimo shown
here) and open-ended tubes into
which needles enclosed in leather
strips were pulled (fig. 274, above;
Chukchi and North Alaskan Eskimo
examples here). There were marked
cultural variations in shape and deco¬
ration, however, as this small assort¬
ment demonstrates.

212

274. Tools of the Seamstress
(Clockwise from top) Bering Sea Es¬
kimo: NMNH 30764. North Alaskan
Eskimo: NMNH 398246, 24436
The beautifully crafted wooden box
with ivory fittings once held a wom¬
an's sewing equipment: a needlecase
or two, sinew thread, buttons, useful
scraps. Such boxes were made by
men for their wives. The handle of
the stone-bladed skin scraper (center)
was carefully shaped to fit the con¬
tours of a woman's palm and fingers,
easing the fatigue of scraping and
thinning hides to prepare them for
clothing. The needlecase ( bottom ) is
a tube of sheet copper into which
was pulled a sealskin strip holding
bone and/or steel needles for safe
storage. The ends of the strip are
fringed and decorated with outgrown
children's "starter" labrets.

275. Beaded boots and Leggings

Koryak: AMNH 70-5260a,b; 70-
5185a, b

Made from shiny dark reindeer-leg
skins, these man's boots and leggings
display geometric beadwork patterns
heavily influenced by Yukaghir and
Even decorative styles. The red flan¬
nel trade cloth with which the boots
are trimmed was a popular and
highly valued commodity in both Si¬
beria and Alaska.

ryak. A Tlingit informant told Frederica de La¬
guna (1972:422) that in Dry Bay "men, not
women, skinned the seals. . . . This [was] in
contrast to the practice at Yakutat, where 'the
women don't want the men to touch it after they
get the seal', and where the flenzing [was]
women's work.'' This explanation demonstrates
the problematic and shifting boundary between
the animal as hunted game and as sewing
material.

The seamstress helped reconcile humans and
animals, not only by indirectly participating in
hunting but also by reinforcing the transforma¬
tional relationship between them in the clothing
that she made. The iconographically oriented
western mind has tended to focus on numerous
fine examples of woven or appliqued animal
representations on garments such as the North¬
west Coast blankets. Seamstresses of the North
Pacific region, however, by taking advantage of
the animal qualities of the raw material, also
used a more direct means to signify the human-
animal symbiosis. A striking example was noted
by Birket-Smith (1953:65), who stated that "for
rainy weather the [Chugach Eskimo] men had a
sort of combination suit made of black-bear skin.
The skin of the head formed a hood, and the
skin of the legs, which was cut open along the
sides, served as sleeves and mittens, respec¬
tively as trousers and boots.'' Such an impressive
animal costume made of the whole animal was
quite rare and recalls the belief held in both
Northeastern Siberia and Alaska that the black
bear was a man who could peel off his skin. But
the use of tailored animal parts to cover the
corresponding parts of the human body was
extremely common. Although visually less no¬
ticeable, this practice served the same transfor¬
mational function as the Chugach bear suit. The
use of animal leg skin, in particular of caribou-
reindeer legs, to make leggings and boots was
universal in Alaska and Siberia. The Chukchi
made leggings with bear leg skin and sewed

bear leg skin on the elbows of their seal hunting
parkas (Bogoras 1904—09:239). In Siberia and
Alaska mittens were often made of reindeer leg
skin or bear paw, and hoods were usually made
from the skin of the head of a caribou, fox, dog,
or wolf, on which the ears were often preserved.
North Alaskan Eskimo men and boys wore a
headband made from the skin of a dog or fox
head, with the nose in the middle of the forehead,
which seemed extremely valuable to them (Mur¬
doch 1892:142). Headbands of the same type
were collected among the Bering Strait Eskimo
by Edward W. Nelson (1899:33), who also ob¬
served a type of headdress made of a whole
arctic fox ''sewed that the head of the fox rests
on the crown of the wearer with the body and
tail hanging down over the back. These caps are
very picturesque and give the wearer a remark¬
ably dignified appearance.''

Animal tails were universally incorporated
into the garments, either as the actual tail, like
in some Even coats, or as an inspiration for the
large U-shaped flap, as in Eskimo women's
parkas (fig. 276). According to John Murdoch
(1892:138) the Point Barrow Eskimo wore "at¬
tached to the belt various amulets and at the
back always the tail of an animal, usually a
wolverine's. Very seldom a wolf's tail [was]
worn, but nearly all, even the boys, ha[d] wol¬
verine tails, which [were] always saved for this
purpose and used for no other.” The tail as part
of the garment was an ancient feature of North¬
eastern Siberian clothing; in the 19th century it

213

276. Eskimo Woman's Parka 277. Eskimo Dress Boots

North Alaskan Eskimo: NMNH 74041 North Alaskan Eskimo: NMNH

153892

The fine boots at lower left are made
beautiful by ruffs of white wolf or
dog fur and alternating panels of
white and dark reindeer leg skin.

278. Koryak Funeral Coat (Back)
Koryak: AMNH 70-2888
The funeral coat was the only Koryak
garment with an explicit tail like Es¬
kimo parkas (Jochelson 1908:602). It
is made of white reindeer fawn skins,
with dog fur trim, dyed sealskin tas¬
sels, seal and dog-skin patchwork de¬
signs, and thread, hair, and silk em¬
broidery (see also fig. 341).

The complex cut and color patterning
of the furs used on this parka — cari¬
bou, reindeer, and mountain sheep,
with marten and wolf fur trim — mark
the sophistication of Eskimo tailoring.

vum

279 Clothing Patterns

hood

a. North Alaskan Eskimo male parka pattern

b. North Alaskan Eskimo female parka pattern

d. Koryak/Chukchi female combination suit and pattern

e. Even male and female coat and pattern

fold

was lost in Koryak and Chukchi coats, except
for one type of Chukchi female hooded coat
(Prytkova 1976:44) and in the Koryak funeral
costume. The tail design was preserved in most
Yukaghir and Even coat patterns and was ac¬
centuated by fur trim and beadwork.

In addition to animal symbolism, the tail motif
was further used to mark the division between
men and women. The complex relationship to
animals and the importance of division of labor
in relation to the game was reflected in every
aspect of the life of the group, including in the
clothing. One of the main markers of gender
was the flap of the coat, although the meaning
of particular flap shapes was not consistent
among different groups. The elegant rounded
U-shaped flap typical of North Alaskan female
clothing was an important sexual marker, similar
to the U-shaped flap of the sewing bag or
"housewife," and to the outline of the female
knife or ulu. The male parka of the North Alaskan
Eskimo was provided with a slightly rounded
bottom piece added in the back (fig. 279), re¬
calling the flap found on male parkas of Eastern
Eskimo groups. The Athapaskan buckskin shirt
was provided with flaps as well (at the back and
front for male, and at the back only for female
shirts), but of a pointed rather than rounded
shape. Among the Even, the lower hem of the
male apron was rounded, whereas that of women
tended to be cut straight.

Far from limiting the seamstresses' possibili¬
ties, the fact that the raw material was preshaped
and charged with animal identity stimulated her
creativity and guided her work towards a dis¬
tinctive cut, according to which particular char¬

acter of the animal she wished to emphasize.
Practically all garments were manufactured with
skins or hair from several different species, the
arrangement of which — each with its own plastic
characteristics — made her work an exercise of
virtuosity and probably of great enjoyment. The
pattern of a garment such as the Northern Eskimo
female parka, inspired by the shape of a large
caribou skin, reveals how complex and elaborate
a design could be obtained by piecing together
the different skins according to shapes, colors,
and type and length of hair. The result was the
reconstitution of an animal creature as mon¬
strous as it was beautiful. Such a design, fixed
as a cultural style, was a pattern for other skin
parkas, such as the ground squirrel parka (fig.
41), and was reproduced with no relationship to
the shape of the original "square" small pelts.

The various and contrasting shades of the
skins were used aesthetically and symbolically
to underline the cut and joints of the garment.
In Alaska an impressive effect was obtained by
the gores, wedgelike inserts, of both male and
female Eskimo parkas, which imitated walrus
tusks. Labrets, which both men and women
wore under their lower lips, reinforced the wal¬
rus image. A parka such as the sumptuous white
reindeer-skin parka with dark "tusks" (fig. 208)
synthesized the two principles used by the North
Pacific seamstresses to signify the dynamic
(transformational) relationship between humans
and animals. The juxtaposition of the reindeer's
body, neck, and head skins onto the person's
(the metonymic process) was combined with the
(metaphorical) representation of the walrus, whose
qualities were acquired not through the skin that
once belonged to him but through an image.

280. Eskimo Sewing Bag
Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 127353
Small sewing articles were rolled up
inside sewing bags (also called
"housewives") that had U-shaped
flaps like the female parka. The cord
could then be wrapped around the
rolled up bag, and held in place by
tucking the ivory crosspiece under
the cord. The bag is made from cari¬
bou ear skins.

281. Chilkat Blanket
Tlingit: NMNH 219504
The most prestigious robe of North¬
west Coast Indian nobility in the 19th
century was the Chilkat blanket.
Highly stylized designs in dyed
mountain goat wool were woven into
the textile, the warp of which was
wool with a cedar bark core. Here the
central panel represents the killer
whale. The creature's head is at the
bottom, the tail at the top, and the
two sides of the dorsal fin extend
outward from the central face, which
represents the blowhole. The bottom
fringes of the blanket are nearly as
long as the height of the woven
panel.

282. "Indian of Mulgrave"

Tomas de Suria, 1791
Tlingit everyday clothing before con¬
tact included the simple heavy skin
cloak, worn here with a woven
spruce-root hat. The iron dagger may
identify this Indian as one who fig¬
ured in a threatening encounter with
a member of the Spanish Malaspina
Expedition in 1791 (Vaughan et al.
1977).

283. Eskimo Labrets
(Clockwise from upper left) North
Alaskan Eskimo: NMNH 37663.
Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 16204,
38800, 44906

Labrets were ornaments that pro¬
jected through slits in the lower lip
(at one or both comers of the mouth
for men, above the center of the chin
for women; see fig. 71) and were
held in the mouth by a flared retainer
piece in back. Lips were pierced for a
child's first labret at puberty. Design
and materials varied widely: (clock¬
wise from upper left) limestone with
a split Chinese wound bead; ivory
with seed beads; ivory with wound
bead; bottle glass.

216

284. Geometric Woven Blanket
Tlingit: MAE 2520-6
Robes of this type date to the early
historic period on the Northwest
Coast (cf fig. 80); few exist today.
They were twined of finely spun
white mountain goat wool yam, with
designs in dyed yellow and dark
brown yam.

Totems and Tattoos

Other examples of North Pacific clothing dem¬
onstrated principles of zoomorphic representa¬
tion that were different from those discussed so
far. On this clothing, the representation of ani¬
mals was not related to the cut of the clothing
or to the correspondence of body parts between
the animal and its wearer, but was an often
complex and abstract surface representation.
The most striking and famous example was the
animal imagery of Northwest Coast blankets.

The form of animal iconography in Northwest
Coast art is discussed by Bill Holm in this volume
(pp. 281-93). Blankets bearing this rich icon¬
ography were worn and displayed for special
occasions, but in everyday life the Northwest
Coast Indians wore untailored fur capes (fig.
282), plain woven blankets, and buckskin pants
and shirts mostly traded from the interior (Atha-
paskan) Indians. A rare type of geometric woven
blanket was inspired by basketry (fig. 284). The
highly decorated blankets were "robes of nobil¬
ity,” and most displayed realistic or convention¬
ally coded crest animals (Holm 1983:57). In the
Northwest Coast context, the social and political
content of these "totem poles on cloth" (Jensen
and Sargent 1986) differed from an animal
image — the walrus, for example — on Eskimo
parkas. The numerous motifs of Tlingit face
painting, worn at potlatches, were also repre¬
sentations of crest animals (Swanton 1908:plates
48—54). Among the Tlingit, when parts of ani¬
mals were used, these were prestigious animals
that were incorporated in ceremonial clothing

as a sign of wealth and status. Whole ermines
on a headdress or bear ears, for example, served
the same purpose as a copper (fig. 380), and
small coppers were sometimes inserted in the
bear ears, while ermine pelts were associated
with the valuable abalone shell (fig. 379; Jonaitis
1986:103, 20). The relationship with animals
and the use of animal motifs in clothing were
thus very different from the personification ob¬
served among the Eskimo.

The art of the Northwest Coast seamstress-
weaver was iconographic and two dimensional,
in contrast to that of Eskimo seamstresses, who
created and decorated garments as three-di¬
mensional, volumetric forms. Technically speak¬
ing, Chilkat woven blankets were exact copies
of designs painted on pattern boards. The dec¬
oration on Tlingit button blankets (the material
for which usually came from Hudson's Bay
Company blankets) consisted of appliqued flan¬
nel cloth and mother-of-pearl buttons, and the
hide of the armor shirt (fig. 82) was crudely cut
and used as a canvas for the application of
painted designs. The same motifs were applied
to boxes, house fronts, and other objects, and
the symbolism of the blankets and shirts did not
derive any specific character from the fact that
it covered or wrapped the human body. As a
matter of fact, the ceremonial leggings and apron
worn by the Tlingit figure in the exhibition were
not woven as such but were cut from a blanket.
Not all women were weavers. The Northwest
Coast weaver was a professional artist, just as
a male painter was. She dressed the blanket, as
it were, and thus, indirectly, dressed people.
The hierarchically organized motifs worked into
the blanket were a statement of the wearer's
status. The blanket served as both a physical
and a symbolic barrier between the nobility and
the common people (Jonaitis 1986:99).

217

Amur River fishskin coats (fig. 414) were
another example of garments used as surfaces
for the presentation of a formal iconography.
The lower hem, the collar, and the front open¬
ing — on the right side for ordinary clothing and
in the middle for a ceremonial coat — were bor¬
dered with colored beads, which served as a
frame for the elaborate ornamental composition
covering the surface of the garment. According
to Berthold Laufer (1902:5),

the animals which appear in the designs of the Amur
natives are just like those who play an important part
in Chinese art and mythology. It is indeed most
remarkable that animals, such as the bear, the sable,
the otter, and many others which predominate in the
household economy, and are favorite subjects in the
traditions as well as in daily conversation, do not
appear in art, whereas the ornaments are filled with
Chinese mythological monsters which are but imper¬
fectly understood.

Moreover, the highly stylized motifs were "read"
by very few and were believed to have only a
decorative purpose by most. Seamstresses, how¬
ever, knew a variety of complex motifs by heart
and took pride in reproducing them exactly.
Because of their proximity to the Chinese, Nanai
women, in particular, were extremely skilled in
embroidery, including silk embroidery. As among

the Tlingit, the same motifs found on clothing
also covered the surfaces of wooden tools, boxes,
bowls, and many other objects of everyday life.
The use of patterns for clothing was similar to
the use of painted boards as design guides by
the Chilkat blanket weavers. Fish skins were
sewn together with invisible seams, and the
large surface obtained was treated as a piece of
whole cloth. Fake side seams might be embroi¬
dered as on a silk or cotton coat. Like the motifs,
the elegant shape of the coat was borrowed
from the Chinese.

The emphasis on motifs superimposed on the
garments with a possible symbolic value — geo-

285. Bark Shredder
Tlingit: FM 13747

To prepare it for use in making blan¬
kets, clothing, and basketry, cedar
bark was shredded to a soft flexible
state with an ulu-like shredding tool.

286. Tlingit Blanket Weaving from
Pattern Board at Kluckwan
AMNH neg. 46173, Harlan Smith
Painting of pattern boards was a
male specialty, while reproducing the
half-design as a full Chilkat blanket
was a female profession.

218

287. Paper Applique Pattern
Nivkhi: AMNH 70- 1936b
Patterns painted on paper and birch-
bark stencils were used as design
guides by seamstresses in Amur
River cultures when decorating fish-
skin coats and other garments. Spiral
designs representing fish and cocks
flank a grinning beast face.

288. Amur River Fishskin Coat
Nanai: AMNH 70-628
Chinese inspiration is evident in both
the cut and ornamentation of this em¬
broidered salmonskin coat, shown
here in back view. The ornamental
figures that are arranged symmetri¬
cally over the surface of the garment
are stitched-on appliques of dyed
salmon skin. The figures are highly
stylized representations of animals
drawn from Chinese mythology. The
only real seams in the garment are
between individual fish skins, but
false seam designs extend up its
sides.

metric rather than representative, and decora¬
tive, possibly magical, rather than totemic —
could be seen in the clothing styles of the Aleut,
southern Alaskan Eskimo, Koryak, Athapaskan,
and Even. Since the seamstresses of these cul¬
tures exploited the aesthetic more than the
symbolic gualities of the material from which
the garment was cut, and added ornamental
elements onto it, their work is related to that of
the Tlingit weaver and the Amur seamstress.

The skins traditionally used by Aleut and
southern Alaskan Eskimo seamstresses — small
mammal pelts, bird skins, and especially gut
skin — were plastically neutral when sewn to¬
gether, and the composite material could be cut
in any pattern, like a piece of cloth. Garment
patterns used in areas relying on small skins for
clothing manifested a different aesthetic orien¬
tation from patterns based on the use of large
hides. In southern Alaskan Eskimo and Aleut

garments, the skins were sewn together in
straight horizontal bands, with the usual addition
of a sguare breast piece. The parkas had straight
bottoms without side slits. Parkas of this type
did not show a gender differentiation. Except
for the collar, the back and the front of the
garment were similar.

Although the cut appeared rather simple and
straight, the ornamentation, by contrast, was
extremely elaborate. Decoration of this type of
garment tended towards rhythmic repetition,
which answered at a smaller scale the repetitive
patterns of the composite material itself: the
rows of dozens of spotted ground squirrel pelts,
scale-patterned fish skin, or iridescent cormorant
skins. Gutskin might be partly bleached to pro¬
duce an alternating pattern of gold and white
strips. The tails of small animals were often
worked into the design, along with tassels of
various other materials. They were inserted into
the seams to underline the horizontal band effect,
a decorative use that stood in contrast to the
representational use of tails on Eskimo zoo-
morphic parkas.

The aesthetic of the horizontal in clothing is
well represented in the exhibition. On the Kodiak
cormorant parka (fig. 268) the vertical seams
between the bird skins were made invisible,
while the horizontal seams were enhanced by

289. Tunic

Tlingit: CMC VII-A-360
This woven mountain goat wool
tunic, made from part of a blanket
that had been cut up and distributed
at a potlatch, is stylistically interme¬
diate between early geometric blan¬
ket designs (fig. 284) and the later
formline designs of Chilkat blankets
(figs. 281, 290). Its rectangular fig¬
ures once had pendant yam tassels,
as in the geometric style. Like later
Chilkat blankets it has solid black-
and-yellow borders, but has no cedar
bark in the warp.

290. Dance Apron and Leggings
Tlingit: NMNH 341202, 2a, 2b
A wraparound apron and decorated
leggings were often worn by the no¬
bility along with a Chilkat blanket on
ceremonial occasions. The woven
pieces of this set were originally part
of a single blanket depicting a diving
killer whale, which was probably cut
up and distributed to guests during a
great memorial potlatch. The woven
pieces have been extended with trade
blanket material and bordered with
skin fringes. Puffin beaks attached to
the fringes rattled together with the
movements of the dancer.

219

291. A Close Look at Decorative
Techniques

(Clockwise from upper left)

A. Even

(earflap of woman's cap, AMNH 70-
5601e, cf. fig. 31)

Tanned reindeer skin, with embroi¬
dery of dyed moose or reindeer hair;
alder-dyed seal pup fringe

B. Bering Sea Eskimo

(front of woman's parka, NMNH

176105, cf. fig. 41)

The white fur in the lower panels
and welted border strips is imported
reindeer skin. The spotted skins are
Arctic ground squirrel, and the trim¬
ming is wolverine.

C. Koniag Eskimo

(front of cormorant skin coat, MAE

2888-84, cf. fig. 268)

The broad horizontal bands are neck
and upper breast skins of the pelagic
cormorant; intermediate bands are
red-colored skin embroidered with
white and dyed sinew thread and
red-, green-, and blue-dyed yarn or
hair, and edged with white fur. There
are also narrow horizontal strips of
skin painted a sparkling black with
paint containing specular hematite.
Attached are tassels of red leather
and white gut skin, tufted with white
fur, some ending in beaks of the
tufted puffin.

D. Aleut

(neckline and amulet of gutskin
parka, MAE 593-18, cf. fig. 52)

The neckline is bordered with em¬
broidery of colored skin strips and
sinew thread, and feathers of cormo¬
rant breast (dark) and flank (white).
Ornamenting seams between the gut-
skin strips are dyed gutskin fringes
and yam. The amulet is woven grass.

strips of white and red dyed reindeer skin,
embroidered patterns, and fringes (fig. 291,
close-up). The fringes in the seams were a
feature commonly found on gutskin parkas (figs.
52, 56, 86, and 292). One practical explanation
is that the fringes served as a protection against
rain, which could flow along them rather than
wetting the seams — although this would not
apply to fur parkas of the same design. The
ornamental aspect of fringes, however, was
probably more important. The extraordinary
care with which the Aleut seamstress joined the
strips of gutskin together using tiny ornamental
stitches and hair embroidery (fig. 56) seems to
indicate a particular concern with emphasizing
the horizontal element of the design. The stylized

anthropomorphic amulet hidden in the collar of
an Aleut parka (fig. 291) also featured woven
horizontal bands on its head and body, which
may schematically represent the parallel lines
painted on hunting hats and the horizontal band¬
ing of the actual parka to which the amulet was
attached. The horizontal stylization of the an¬
thropomorphic amulet dispels any doubt about
the visual intention of the gutskin parka design.

Gutskin parkas among Eskimo and Aleut were
not only practical but had also a religious function
(fig. 350). According to Dorothy Jean Ray
(1981:56), "almost all shamans [in South Alaska]
wore one when curing as well as when perform¬
ing miracles under the sea and in other secret
places." Gutskin parkas were worn for dancing

220

the other world” (Serov, p. 251 this volume),
which might explain the parka's role as "trav¬
eling” garment for the shaman. A relationship
might have existed between the conception of
the universe as a series of superimposed worlds
and the aesthetic of the horizontal in clothing,
which was manifested in both Siberia and Alaska,
not only in gutskin parkas but also, for example,
in the curious construction of North Asiatic hoop
armor.

While the embroidery work along the seams
of Aleut and Koniag garments was unigue in its
delicacy, in Northeastern Siberia the manufac¬
ture of fur mosaics, slit embroidery, and hair
embroidery on the opuvan, the large strip sewn
as lower hem of the coats (fig. 421), gave Koryak
seamstresses the reputation of being fine em¬
broiderers. The beautiful opuvan of the Koryak
dancing coat is a good example of the geometric
patterns used by the Koryak. Even when not
ornamented, the lower hem of the Koryak and
Chukchi coat was always added as a separate
strip to the body of the coat (fig. 329).

Athapaskan tunics, on which the lower hem
was cut into pointed flaps with modest orna¬
mentation and fringes, displayed a large and
elaborate band of beads, dentalium shells, or
quillwork on the chest and the sleeves, encircling
the body, and a red line often underlined the
seams and the ornate bands. In Siberia and
North America quillwork and hair embroidery
were replaced by or combined with beadwork,
as soon as colored glass beads became available
through trade. As for the red lines, they are
reminiscent of the Eskimo lifeline that bordered
objects, and they are found on Naskapi Indian
coats from Labrador as well. Both men and
women wore dentalium shells and beads in the
form of head bands, earrings, and bracelets.
Their faces were tattooed with lines on the chin,

292. From Guts to Garment
St. Lawrence Island Eskimo: NMNH
T-1676. SI neg. 82-8286, Henry Col¬
lins, 1930 (Gambell village, St. Law¬
rence Island)

Cleaning and inflating yards of wal¬
rus intestine were the first steps in
creating beautiful, waterproof gutskin
garments like the dress parka shown
here. The inflated intestine was hung
up to dry; if in winter, it would be
bleached white by the wind and cold.
The seamstress sewed strips of split,
dried intestine together with sinew
thread to create a parka, working tiny
auklet beaks and feathers into the
seams for decorative effect. Fine St.
Lawrence Island gut parkas were
traded to the Maritime Chukchi, who
wore them in ceremonies honoring
Keretkun, walrus-god and Master of
the Sea.

ceremonies too. Their protective power against
female pollution has been noted earlier. In the
North too, among the Maritime Chukchi and
Asian Eskimo, gutskin parkas were worn as
ceremonial garments for the Keretkun ceremony
and other festivals (Bogoras 1904-09:393). For
this particular occasion, the Chukchi obtained
beautifully worked light gutskin parkas from St.
Lawrence Island seamstresses.

But it remains unclear what important quality
of the garment endowed the wearer with power
and created a boundary around his or her person.
Was there a particular power attached to gutskin
as a material? Was there a relationship between
the waterproof quality of the garment and pro¬
tection from spirits, in which case the seams, as
joints in the material, would be particularly
important? A connection might also have been
present between the intestines from which the
garment was made and the bladders that served
such an important role in the hunting ceremonies
of the Yupik Eskimo. In Siberia the loops made
by intestines symbolized the "crooked path to

221

cheeks, and forehead. Athapaskan leggings were
embellished with bands that emphasized ankle
and knee joints, and the mittens were banded
around the thumb and wrist. The same type of
joint bands was embroidered on the pair of Even
shaman's leggings (fig. 339), together with an
encircled anthropomorphic character on one knee
and a cross on the other. Anthropomorphic
motifs, rather than animal representations as
seen on other North Pacific garments, were
characteristic of Siberian magic, and a schematic
human figure was sometimes tattooed on a
person's body to represent the helper spirit.

There is no evidence that the tendency to
mark the joints on the clothing found in the
North Pacific region was historically linked from
one culture to the other. However, the concern
for joint marks, which were so important to
Eskimo culture because they were the location
of souls, could explain the care with which seams
were decorated and why magic qualities were
attributed to belts.

Belts, bracelets, and tattooing have corre¬
sponding meanings. Tattoos were "sewn" by
passing a needle and thread smeared in soot
under the skin, to mark the face, arms, legs, or
breast with lines, scrolls, or (in Siberia only)
anthropomorphic shapes. Like face painting, tat-

293. Koryak Coat Styles
(Above) AMNH 70-3187; (right)
70-3892; (below) 70-3150, 51, 52, 53
Carved wooden stamps (below) were
used to imprint designs with red
alder bark dye on the upper coat,
made from bleached, dehaired rein¬
deer skin. The reindeer skin dance
coat (right), with its constellation pat¬
tern of white stars, richly embroi¬
dered opuvan (lower hem band) and
alder-dyed sealskin tassels may have
been used by an Aliutor shaman. It is
encircled by a false belt design.

222

295. Joints and Skeletal Motifs
(Upper left) Ahtna: NMNH 72842.
(Lower right) Even: MAE 445-l/13a,b
Interesting parallels exist between Si¬
berian and Athapaskan strip embroi¬
dery on clothing, the former employ¬
ing dyed moose or reindeer hair, the
latter dyed porcupine quill. Both
rythmically phase between light and
dark colors and visually emphasize
joints — eg., knees, ankles, thumb,
wrist — or skeletal features of the
wearer. On the Athapaskan mittens,
where only the thumb may move sep¬
arately, this joint is marked, while on
the Even gloves the joints and bones
of each finger are traced.

294. Beaded Bands

(Left) SI neg. 2605. (Right) AMNH

neg. 22410, Jesup Exp.

Heavy beadwork chest bands re¬
placed dyed porcupine quill bands
(fig. 298) on Athapaskan tunics (/eft)
as trade beads became available. A
similar process of replacement took
place in Siberia, where beads came
to predominate over hair embroidery
in the geometric band designs of
Even clothing (right).

tooing served a decorative or prestigious func¬
tion, or else served the same purpose as an
amulet. Koryak and Chukchi women were tat¬
tooed, as were Eskimo women, among whom
the most common motif was a series of lines on
the chin, which was intended as a fertility charm.
These were applied after puberty and marked
the passage to womanly status. Other magic
lines and motifs were tattooed as a measure
against disease. They were inscribed on the
painful area as a protective device against the
evil spirits responsible for the affliction. As seen
in early illustrations, tattoos used to be much
more complex and widespread, among both
women and men. Nineteenth-century enthnog-
raphers reported that this tradition was being
lost, along with the wearing of labrets. The
meaning of most of the motifs was also forgotten.
Other lines were drawn on the body by means
of bracelets, arm bands, and breast bands, which
encircled the limbs and bodies of the Eskimo
and Chukchi and to which beads and other
ornaments were sometimes attached. These at¬
tachments were considered as amulets, at least
among the Chukchi (Bogoras 1904—09:258, 346).
Belts represented a major line of demarcation,
physically, on the clothing, as well as symboli¬
cally, on the person. Eskimo women's caribou
teeth belts served as curing amulets (fig. 296),
and Chukchi and Eskimo men's belts carried
animal tails, ancient harpoons, and other amu¬
lets. John Murdoch described (1892:136) such
a belt whose edges were dyed in red, as a lifeline
would have been. According to Father Ioann
Veniaminov (1984:222), the Unalaska Aleut wore
"a belt plaited of sinew or grass spoken over
[with an incantation] and with mysterious
knots ... on the naked body as certain protective
means against death during attacks upon ene¬
mies and strong wild animals." Eskimo belts
were precious and passed from father to son or
from mother to daughter.

In the various regions of the North Pacific,
lines were tattooed on people and drawn, beaded,
and embroidered on the clothing that wrapped
them. These lines, as lifelines, as a sign of
passage (from childhood to adulthood), or as
protection against spirits, were ornamentally or
stylistically more prominent in certain areas,
whereas other groups reserved them as a magic
or shamanistic rather than artistic motif.

223

Fringes, Tassels, and Passages

One dimension of clothing that an exhibition or
a photograph cannot convey is the effect pro¬
duced by a garment when it is worn in motion.
Moving fringes and tassels accentuated and
animated ornamental bands, seams, and hems.

Chilkat blankets were called "fringes around
the body” (Emmons 1907). During a potlatch,
unworn blankets were displayed flat against a
wall, allowing a full view of each complex com¬
position. Others were worn, and, as Bill Holm
(1975:152) remarked, their perfect symmetry
was therefore broken at the shoulders, and the
message of the design lost. During the dances,
however, the long and heavy fringes gave life
to the blanket. Holm commented that "the con¬
stant flow of movement, broken at rhythmic
intervals by rather sudden . . . changes of mo¬
tion-direction characterizes both the dance and
art of the Northwest Coast” (1965:92—93). This
suggests that the movements of both dance and
art were, in the Northwest Coast context, met¬
aphors for spiritual transformation (Carpenter
1973:284). The metamorphosis represented in
the fringed blankets was thus more abstract than
the animal personification or transformation
symbolized in the Chukchi khonba or in the
Eskimo "tusked” parka, for example, and it was,
among the Tlingit, enacted during rituals only.

Similarly, the fine goat-hair fringes on Aleut
gutskin parkas or the fur tassels on South Alaskan
and Bering Sea Eskimo parkas might have served
both visually and symbolically as a dynamic
element of clothing. Clothing served as a pro¬
tective yet spiritually permeable interface be¬

tween a person and the world, in which the
seams played an important role. Fringes and
tassels, inserted in the seams, were conduits
through which magic could operate: ermine tails
or puffin and auklet beaks, for example, were
often parts of the fringe work, as colorful orna¬
ments and as amulets (figs. 268 and 290). In
this sense, fringes were reminiscent of the at¬
tachments found around the lifelines that encir¬
cled masks, bowls, and many other objects.

In Siberia, where the color red symbolized
life, red tassels of dyed seal pup skin were
common ornaments. These were traded, first as
skin from the maritime groups to the Even, then
as red tassels from the Even, who were excellent
dyers, back to the Chukchi and Koryak. They
were sewn onto dancing garments (fig. 293),
onto shamanistic garments and hats (figs. 332
and 333), and onto Chukchi sealskin "wrestler's
trousers" as a mark of bravery and fierce tem¬
perament (Bogoras 1904—09:237). The same
type of tassel was attached to armor, together
with an anthropomorphic (helper-spirit) figure
(fig. 302). Other fringes, tassels, and bead strings
were sewn onto clothing to produce movement
and beauty (fig. 97). They also added an audible
component to shamanistic performances.

North Pacific clothing invites those who have
the chance to view it to be attentive to the subtle
dancing magic that seamstresses imprisoned in
their seams.

Jewelry from the North Pacific region was
made of ivory, metal, and trade beads. Examples
include the small representative carvings of

296. Caribou Teeth Belt
Bering Sea Eskimo: MNMH 358255
Hunters removed the lower front
teeth of the caribou they killed,
which were used to decorate wom¬
en's belts. The hundreds of caribou
represented by the teeth on this belt,
along with the lavish use of very old
blue Chinese trade beads, indicated
the prosperity of the wearer and her
family. Flagellation with caribou
teeth belts was a curing method.

297. Tattoos of Womanhood
(Left) Asiatic Eskimo, AMNH neg.
22323, Jesup Expedition. (Right) St.
Lawrence Island, UM neg. 723725,
Charles Hughes, 1954-55
Eskimo tattooing of the chin, nose,
cheeks, legs, and arms was per¬
formed at puberty, and an ability to
stoically endure the pain of the pro¬
cedure was proof of a woman's readi¬
ness to bear children. The chin marks
were a charm for fertility, but no ex¬
plicit meanings were known for the
elaborate and varied cheek patterns
of the Asiatic Eskimo, beyond their
esthetic value.

224

298. Athapaskan Tunic
Holikachuk: MAE 620-40a
This man's shirt in soft, tanned cari¬
bou or moose skin is ornamented
with porcupine quill band designs,
fringes of skin strips decorated with
quills, and beaver fur cuffs. Painted
red lines extending up front and back
end in Raven footlike symbols. This
old and beautiful example of Atha¬
paskan quillwork was collected on
the upper Innoko River, Alaska, by
Voznesenskii in the 1840s.

299. Koryak and Eskimo Ornaments
(Top left, pair) Koryak: AMNH 70-
3753a, b. (Top right, pair) Koryak:
AMNH 70-321 6a, b. (Center, pair)
Bearing Sea Eskimo: NMNH 127473.
(Center) Nunivak Island Eskimo:
NMNH 340332. (Bottom) Koryak:
AMNH 70-3590

Earrings and necklaces framed the
face in bright colors and motion. Ko¬
ryak copper wire ear ornaments (top)
are hung with long dangling strands
of beads, ending in brass whaletails
and large beads. Very little metal
was used in Alaskan jewelry (center),
but delicate ivory elements were
often used to accent the deep colors
of glass beads. Chinese "vase-melon"
beads hang from a Koryak hair band
(bottom).

Eskimo jewelry and ornaments (fig. 263), dec¬
orative geometric bands (fig. 324), fringes (fig.
299), and red tassels (fig. 325). Jewelry therefore
paralleled design styles seen in clothing and
may have served similar symbolic functions.

Both men and women wore jewelry, although
the styles were not necessarily identical. Bogoras
(1904—09:259) noted that many Chukchi men
wore women's earrings, generally by the order
of a shaman. By direction of the shaman, Chukchi
men also wore women's-style boots on occasion.
This transvestism was a ploy to hide and protect
the person from evil spirits, in the same way
that sick people had their faces blackened so
that the evil spirit would not recognize them as
human (Serov, p. 245 this volume). Transvestism
in the shaman's garments represented his or
her position between the male and female worlds.
The shaman's position between the human and
the spiritual worlds was symbolized by the use
of contrasting colors: black and red, or dark and
light (fig. 334). The passage between gender
identities and other passages throughout the
lives and deaths of Siberian people were marked

225

on clothing with the same care that the Alaskan
Eskimo represented the transformational rela¬
tionship with the animal world (fig. 341).

Clothing was an interface between each per¬
son and the surrounding world. It both imbued
the wearer with power and identity and pro¬
tected him or her from evil spirits. Iconographic
motifs, colors, and ornaments were added to
clothing to serve these functions. The material
and the cut of the clothing, as this essay has
tried to emphasize, also conveyed cosmological
meanings.

In northern Alaska, the Eskimo parka was a
representational three-dimensional piece of art
adapted to the human body and was charged
with the meaning contained in the various pieces
of fur and in its symbolic cut. A man-walrus,
man-reindeer, or man-bear would illustrate, as
would a visual pun on an Eskimo carving, the
transformational quality of the inhabitants of the
world.

Animal parts and fur were used as amulets
by Tlingit shamans. However, the representation
of crest animals on blankets was a sign of secular
status, rather than of the relationship between
people and animal spirits. It was the movement
of the fringes of the Chilkat blanket or the
shimmering of the lines of mother-of-pearl but¬
tons on button blankets that served as a meta¬
phor for metamorphosis.

Linear beadwork or quillwork, tattooed lines,
belts, fringes, and bracelets among other groups
marked not only the physical and spiritual limits
of the body but also openings and passages that
were conduits for communication and transfor¬
mation.

300. Dress Gloves
Even: AMNH 70-5601 g,h
Even women were highly skilled at
tanning and sewing reindeer skin, as
seen in these soft, supple gloves with
accented seams. Trade bead medal¬
lions decorate the backs of the
gloves.

301. Girls Dancing
AMNH neg. 1344, Jesup Exp.

These Maritime Chukchi girls danc¬
ing for fun in the snow wear reindeer
fur combination suits with their typi¬
cal long, wide sleeves and open
necks with fur ruffs. One girl at left
wears a fancy gutskin parka, prob¬
ably made by St. Lawrence Island Es¬
kimos (cf fig. 292). In the background
are whale rib tent frames.

226

War and Trade

Ernest S. Burch, Jr.

Similar cultural developments on both sides of
Bering Strait suggest that people have been
moving back and forth across it for thousands
of years. Indeed, human migration and inter¬
action between Chukotka and Alaska probably
have been more or less continuous ever since
the strait was most recently formed, some 14,000
years ago. Unfortunately, the specific nature of
human relations across Bering Strait remains
obscure until very recent times.

The first recorded reference to intercontinen¬
tal relations did not come until the mid-17th
century. Semeon Dezhnev, sailing eastward from
the mouth of the Kolyma River, passed south
through the strait and eventually ended up at
the Anadyr River. He reported that on two
islands located to the east of the easternmost
tip of Asia, lived the "Tooth People." They were
called that because they wore "tooth ornaments
made of ivory which protrude through holes
which they pierce through their lips" (Dmytry-
shyn et al. 1985:332). Although Dezhnev char¬
acterized the Tooth People as Chukchi, their use
of labrets indicates clearly that they were Alas¬
kan Eskimo; the islands must have been the Big
and Little Diomede islands, which are located in
the middle of Bering Strait.

Information about contacts across Bering Strait
remained spotty for a long time after Dezhnev's
voyage. We are fortunate that the North Alaskans
wore labrets, for it is only through occasional
rumors about the Tooth People passed on by
Chukchi to Russians on the Kolyma River that
we know that some kind of intercontinental
relations must have been taking place. But we
really know nothing substantive about those
relations until the end of the 18th century, when
a series of Russian (and later English) exploring
expeditions began to visit the region.

Our information for the 19th and 20th cen¬
turies is reasonably good, although naturally
less complete than one would like. For this
period, trade and warfare were really the only
two kinds of relations that took place to any
significant extent across Bering Strait. In this
paper I attempt to summarize what was involved
in these activities over the past 200 years.

302. Asiatic Eskimo Warrior
Armor ensembles of this type were
worn into battle by the Chukchi,

Asian Eskimo, and St. Lawrence Is¬
land Eskimo. A warrior could turn his
back to a hail of incoming arrows and
be protected by the upper shield,
which is made of bleached sealskin
and wood. The collapsible lower body
armor of sealskin hoops could be tied
up around the waist to free the legs
for running. NMNH 160564 (shield),
280200 (body armor), T-16634 (pants)
T-16626 (boots), AMNH 70-7861a
(spear)

227

303. Provisional Political Map of the
Bering Strait Region (ca. 1800-1825)
The thin lines indicate boundaries be¬
tween native societies (or nations);
the heavy lines delineate major lan¬
guage boundaries.

Koryak Area

1. Kerek

Chukchi Area

2. Viluneilet

3. Taelkapelet

4. Unmelet

5. Kuuluusilet

6. Ettelet

7. Dry Anyuy

8. Saalet

9. Petiymel

10. Errilet

1 1 . Umvaamelet

12. Kuulukelet

13. Chukchi Peninsula

14. Bering Strait Coast

15. Aivalet

Sirenikskii Yupik Area

16. Sirinegmiut

Chaplinskii Yupik Area

17. Imtugmiit

18. Avatmiit

19. Qiighwaaghmiit

20. Tashighmiit

21. Pauvuilagmiit

22. Sikuuvugmiit

23. Kialigagmiit

24. Kukuligmiit

25. Sivugarmiit

26. Urjazighmiit

27. Napakutaghmiit

Naukanskii Yupik Area

28. Nunatmiit

29. Nuvuqaghmiit

Central Alaskan Yupik Area

30. Kuigluarmiut

31. Kuigpagmiut

32. Iqurmiut

33. Qaerauranermiut

34. Pastulirmiut

35. Taprarmiut

36. Unalirmiut

37. Caxtulirmiut

38. Kuuyugmiut [?]

39. Kaiuarmiut [?]

North Alaskan Inuit Area

40. Ayaasariarmiut

41. Ukiuvurjmiut

42. Sinrarmiut

43. Qaviazarmiut

44. Imaqtiit

45. Kigikmiut

46. Tapqarmiut

47. Pittarmiut

48. Kaijigmiut

49. Siilvium Karjianigmiut

50. Kiitaarmiut

51. Qikiqtarzugmiut

52. Kuurjmiut

53. Akunirmiut

54. Kuuvaum Kagianirmiut

55. Nuatarmiut

56. Napaaqturmiut

57. Kivallinirmiut

58. Tikirarmiut

59. Utuqqarmiut

60. Karjianirmiut

61. Kuukpigmiut

62. Silalinirmiut

63. Kakligmiut

64. Kuulugzuarmiut

65. Ikpikparjmiut

Kutchin Area

66. Di? hai Gwicin

67. Neecit Gwicin

68. Van Tat Gwicin

69. Gwicyaa Gwicin

70. Tsatet'aicin

Koyukon Area

71. Stevens Village-Tanana

72. Nikhto Hot'ana

73. Hogatza

74. Qunutna Xotana

75. Tanana-Nowitna

76. Kantishna

77. Nogi Xotans

78. Huslia-Dalbi

79. Kodilqaq Xotans

80. Yudo? Xotana

Holikachuk Area

81. Holikachuk

Deg Hit' an Area

82. Anvik

83. Bonasilla

84. Georgetown

Kolchan Area

85. East Fork

86. Telida-Minchumina

Tanana Area

87. Nenana-Toklat

88. Minto

89. Chena

90. Salcha

91. Wood River

228

When we first come to know about the region,
both Alaska and Chukotka were inhabited by
several different cultural groups. On Chukotka
these were the Chukchi and the Sirenikski,
Chaplinski, and Naukanski Yupik Eskimo. In
western and central Alaska, they were the North
Alaskan Inupiat and the Central Alaskan Yupik
Eskimo, and the Kutchin and Koyukon Athapas-
kan Indians. Each of these large entities was
subdivided into linguistic subgroups of various
kinds, but the only ones relevant to the present
discussion are what Dorothy Jean Ray (1967)
has termed tribes and which I have called

societies (Burch 1984).

Informants of mine who were born in the early
1880s, while these societies were still operating
in northern Alaska, referred to them in English
as "nations.'' I adopt that term here to make
the point that they performed the same basic
functions for their members that modern nation¬

304. Athapaskan Indian Weaponry
Prob. Kutchin: NMNH 2024. Ahtna:
MAE 2667-14

Long knives with flaring, voluted
handles were used for both hunting
and fighting. They were originally
made from copper obtained through
the native trade system; later exam¬
ples like this one collected in the
1860s are made of trade steel.

Lashed to wooden poles, they were
used by especially daring hunters to
kill bears. Heavy caribou antler clubs
were carried by Ahtna warriors for
hand-to-hand combat. This highly or¬
namented example has a hide-
wrapped, fringed handle, ornamented
with beads and hair embroidery. Red
ocher has been rubbed into the pat¬
terns engraved on the club.

states do for us today. These functions were of
course performed in very different ways, be¬
cause these societies were both tiny (a few
hundred to perhaps two thousand people) and
organized along different lines than modern
nations are. All of them were segmental, in that
they comprised a number of families and clans,
but completely lacking in any government or
other type of organization with a nationwide
span of control. Nevertheless, the citizens of
each one perceived of themselves as being
ideologically, politically, and territorially distinct

War

As the Bering Strait region emerged from the
mists of prehistory in the 18th century, hostility
seems to have prevailed over trade as the

dominant theme of international affairs. This

was true both within and between language
areas. The Chukchi and Eskimo in particular
were aggressive people by disposition and ef¬
fective as fighters. Their men constantly pre¬
pared for combat through vigorous physical
exercise, weaponry training and drill, and prac-

from their neighbors and were willing to fight
to maintain that status.

A map of the nations occupying northern
Beringia ca. a.d. 1800—1825 is presented in
figure 303. The map is keyed to Table 3, which
lists each nation by its native name, if known,
and by a descriptive label, if not. This map is
highly speculative and is presented as a first
approximation rather than as a fully documented
set of conclusions. The details have been most
fully worked out for the North Alaskan Inupiat
area (Burch 1980; Ray 1975) and least ade¬
quately resolved for the Chukotka coast. Hope¬
fully, further research will permit the substantial
refinement that this map and list require to be
considered truly accurate. However, for the
present purposes precise accuracy is not nec¬
essary; the map does present an accurate model
of what the real situation evidently was like at
the time, even if many of the details may be
wrong.

The importance of these traditional nations to
the present discussion inheres in the fact that
war and trade took place between them and not
between the more general cultural groups, such
as the Chukchi and the North Alaskan Inupiat,
as the general literature would suggest. There
was at least as much fighting going on between
nations within the North Alaskan Inupiat realm,
for example, as there was between North Alas¬
kan Inupiat nations and, say, Koyukon or Kutchin
nations (Burch and Correll 1972).

tice in dodging missiles. It is not surprising that
the peoples of Chukotka were the only native
people in all of the empire who were not sub¬
jected by the Russians by force of arms. The
Russians tried to defeat them during the 18th
century but abandoned the effort in 1774.

Warfare could begin for a number of reasons,
such as revenge for past grudges, intrusion into
one another's territory, and murder. In such
small nations personal animosities and the family
and clan loyalties of ordinary people had a
significant impact on international affairs. Since
these peoples had been in contact with one
another for centuries, there was always a backlog
of unavenged offenses to help turn a seemingly
trivial incident into a casus belli.

Since there were no governments or positions
of national leadership in these tiny countries,
the first problem was to muster an attacking
force. If an offense was serious enough, this was
an easy matter because many men would vol-

229

305. "Battlefield Near Point Barrow"
Neg. 120809, National Museum of
Denmark. Leo Hansen, 1924
A pile of broken skulls and bones
marks an old Eskimo battlefield on
the tundra of northern Alaska, photo¬
graphed by the Danish Fifth Thule
Expedition (Rasmussen 1927).

unteer. If it was not so severe, the incident
might simply be added to the growing fund of
grievances and left for future action. To be
effective, a military force had to number at least
several dozen men. In extreme cases all of the
healthy adult men in the entire country could
be involved. Another possibility was to form an
alliance with people in other nations and combine
forces for a major attack on an especially trou¬
blesome country. In one such case in Alaska the
members of three or four nations formed an
alliance against the Tikirarmiut nation, of Point

Hope. They defeated the Point Hopers in open
battle, killing perhaps as many as 200 men in
the process (Burch 1981:14). The Chukchi and
the Asiatic Eskimo no doubt formed similar
alliances to deal with the Russians.

Weapons consisted of bows and arrows, lances
and knives. Other accoutrements of war in Alaska
were slat armor made from pieces of bone or
ivory and protective vests made of furs (Nelson
1899:P1. XCII). On Chukotka both Eskimo and
Chukchi warriors sometimes wore heavy pro¬
tective body armor and cuirasses (VanStone

306. Plate and Rod Armor
North Alaskan Eskimo: NMNH
T-1886. Aleut: NMNH 17249
Armor made with overlapping rows
of small plates was in use all the way
from Japan to Bering Strait. As far
north as Koryak territory the plates
were made of iron, replaced by bone
and ivory plates among the Chukchi
and Eskimo. This Eskimo example
from Bering Strait (left) has bone
plates and an upper section of thick
hide. The rod armor (right), from a
prehistoric Aleutian Island burial
cave, is the only complete example of
Aleut armor in existence. Its cedar
rods are lashed together with finely
plaited sinew cord.

230

307. The Art of the Armorer
Koryak: AMNH 70-3822 (helmet).
Koryak: MAE 956-92. Nivkhi: MAE
202-102 (spear points)

The forging and inlaying of iron was
an art that spread to the Koryak per¬
haps via the Evenk but ultimately
from the Chinese or Japanese. Koryak
iron weapons and armor reflect these
southern influences. The shape and
decorative patterns of the Koryak
spearpoint (upper) imitate the more
elaborate Nivkhi example (lower)
from near the Chinese border.

1983). People maintained themselves on the
alert and in constant readiness to repel attack,
and virtually all of the early explorers com¬
mented on the "good order” in which weapons
were kept.

The tactics of native war have been described
in detail only for Alaskan Eskimo (Burch 1974).
The favored procedure was to mount a sneak
nighttime attack on an enemy village, either
catching the inhabitants asleep or else all gath¬
ered together in the community hall for a festival.
If the defenders got trapped inside the hall they
might be doomed. However, men were always
armed, and many community halls had secret
escape tunnels for just such an eventuality. Even
successfully launched sneak attacks could some¬
times be repulsed.

Alaskan Eskimos also knew how to form and
maneuver battle lines in an open confrontation.
They understood interval spacing, the principle
of mass, and the importance of terrain and wind
conditions. Open battle began with a firefight
with bows and arrows and eventually proceeded
to shock encounters with spears, clubs, and
knives. Apparently the Koyukon and Athapaskan
Indians used the same tactics, since accounts of
Eskimo-Indian wars recounted by Eskimos in¬
dicate that both sides were operating by the
same basic procedures. The Chukchi, presum¬
ably, were at least as skillful in such matters.

In Alaska the sole objective of war seems to
have been to kill the enemy: men, women, and
children. However, attackers deliberately tried
to let one person escape to spread the word to
compatriots never to offend the attacking nation
again. Women were sometimes taken prisoner,
but usually this was for only a brief period;
eventually they were tortured — often horribly —
before being put to death. Warriors on the Asiatic
side seem to have been more interested in
keeping women captives as slaves.

At least some hostilities occurred across Ber¬
ing Strait and also between people living on the
Asiatic mainland and St. Lawrence Island. In one
instance, a party of Naukan and Uelen people
raided the former village of Kauwerak, on the
Seward Peninsula. In another, a party of Sibe¬
rians was annihilated on the Alaskan shore of
the Chukchi Sea a short distance north of Cape
Krusenstern; the event is memorialized in the
name of a nearby lagoon, Kotlik Lagoon, which
is based on the generic Alaskan Inupiaq term
for a Siberian, namely, ''qutliq.” On the other

308. Tlingit Armor

MAE 2454-8 (left); NMNH 60241

(right)

For body protection the Tlingit wore
slat armor, hide armor, or both in
combination. The slat armor cuirass
(left) is made of tough hardwood
slats wrapped with hundreds of feet
of two-ply sinew cord. Sections are
joined with heavy skin laces and
panels, and the overall shape was
carefully fitted to the torso to protect
vital organs. The painted hide armor
tunic (right) is ornamented with
carved bone "sharks' teeth” and
Chinese coins. Chinese coins were
widely traded on the Northwest
Coast, not surprising given that the
traders' principal market for their
furs was China.

231

side of the strait the members of the Billings
Expedition in 1791 were offered access to some
captive women who had been taken in some
kind of an encounter with Alaskans (Sauer
1802:252) Unfortunately, almost nothing is known
about the details or the extent of warfare be¬
tween the peoples of Chukotka and Alaska.

The same general pattern of warfare that
existed in the Bering Strait area extended for a
considerable distance southward around the North
Pacific Rim along both its eastern and western
margins. Warfare was clearly a widespread phe¬
nomenon among the peoples of this part of the
world during the late prehistoric— early historic
period. In general, both the objectives of war
and the means of making it were pretty much
the same everywhere, although, the farther
south one got, the more important booty and
the capture and enslavement of enemies became
as strategic goals. In all areas, the incidence of
warfare declined as a result of depopulation
following the introduction of European epidemic
diseases (and the often attendant famines), the
breakdown of traditional native political bound¬
aries, and the self-conscious interference by
Europeans in native affairs. By the end of the
19th century — several decades earlier toward
the south — warfare had essentially ceased as a
dominant theme of interregional relations among
different native groups.

309. “A Kolosh Warrior from Bara¬
nov Island"

Mikhail Tikhanov, 1818, RIPSA 2114
The warrior is wearing painted hide
armor and carrying a dagger and flint¬
lock rifle.

310. Tlingit Helmets and Visor
Clockwise from upper left: NMNH
168157, MAE 571-17, MAE 2454-17
(helmets); MAE 5795-9 (visor)

Rattles were transformed by the fan¬
tastic helmets worn atop the heads of
Tlingit fighters into clashes of tower¬
ing supernatural beings. The helmet
on the upper left is a scowling war¬
rior's face, once bristling with bear
fur whiskers and thick shocks of hu¬
man hair. His pierced hands stretch
across the front rim of the helmet,
joined to a stylized body painted over
the back. To the right is a black-faced
helmet with abalone shell eyes and
teeth, similar to the spirit faces por¬
trayed on shamans' masks. The bot¬
tom helmet is probably a bear in part
human form, with both bear's and
man's ears, although a tail or finlike
flap of painted leather on the back of
the helmet suggests another creature
may have been intended. A visor
(bottom left ) was worn below a hel¬
met and covered the warrior's face to
the level of his eyes; shallow notches
in the upper edge allowed fuller vi¬
sion. It was held in place by biting a
loop of heavy spruce-root pegged to
the inside. Ornamented battle hel¬
mets, some with animal crests, were
also worn by early Japanese and
Chinese warriors.

311. Tlingit Daggers
NMNH 221184 (top); 9288 (bottom)
The sculptured pommel of the upper
weapon is a split profile image of a
sea-grizzly, inlaid with abalone shell.
The double-bladed lower dagger
could be thrust both up and down
without regripping, making it espe¬
cially deadly in close combat.

312. Spear

Tlingit: NMNH 75419
Carved like a totem pole with inter¬
locked crest and mythical figures, this
spear also served as a ceremonial
staff.

232

233

Trade

The origins of international trade in the Bering
Strait region are lost in the distant past. We may
suppose that it went on to at least a limited
extent for centuries prior to the period of par¬
ticular interest here, but there simply is no
information about it. What evidence does exist
suggests that in the 17th and 18th centuries,
hostility must have been the dominant theme in
international affairs, but in subsequent decades
it was eclipsed in importance by trade.

The first step in setting up trade relations
between two nations within the general Bering
Strait area was to show that the individuals
involved had peaceful rather than hostile inten¬
tions. This was accomplished through an open
approach by the representatives of one nation
to those of another, ideally on neutral ground,
otherwise at some distance from a settlement.
As the two groups of strangers converged, but
while still at a distance, various signals were
given — waving empty hands, conspicuously set¬
ting aside weapons, holding aloft furs or other
goods — all to suggest that trade, not war, was
what the visitors had in mind. The presence of
women in the visiting party also was a sign of
peaceful intentions. For example, when the
Beechey Expedition approached St. Lawrence
Island for the first time in July of 1826,

the natives . . . launched four baidars [open boats], of
which each contained eight persons, males and fe¬
males. They paddled towards the ship with great
quickness, until they were within speaking distance,
when an old man who steered the foremost boat
stood erect and held up in succession nets, walrus
teeth, skin shirts, harpoons, bows and arrows, and
small birds; he then extended his arms, rubbed and
patted his breast, and came fearlessly alongside
(Beechey 1831,1:331).

The second step was probably what has come
to be known as silent trade. As demonstrated
to Otto von Kotzebue by a North Alaska Inupiat,
the process was as follows:

The stranger first comes, and lays some goods on the
shore, and then retires; the American [Inupiat] comes,
looks at the things, puts as many skins near them as
he thinks proper to give, and then also goes away.
Upon this the stranger approaches, and examines
what is offered him; if he is satisfied with it, he takes
the skins, and leaves his goods instead; but if not,
then he lets all the things lie, retires a second time,
and expects an addition from the buyer. In this manner
the dealing seems to me to continue without speaking,
and there is no doubt but the Tschukutskoi [Chukchi]
obtain here the skins for the Russian trade (Kotzebue
1821,1:228).

A similar pattern of trade was also used by
unacquainted Koyukon Indians and North Alas¬
kan Inupiat (Anderson 1974—75:68). No doubt,

especially in the beginning, such transactions
must have been undertaken in an atmosphere
of considerable tension, since the common pat¬
tern was to attack and try to kill total strangers
if they were inferior in numbers or weaponry,
or to flee from them otherwise.

Silent trade was also used between unfriendly
nations in Chukotka. However, they had also
developed a pattern of closer, if no less hostile
contact.

In very ancient times there was a kind of fair in
[Naukan] or in [Uelen] which was held outside of the
village, on the flat seashore, for fear of hostili¬
ties. . . . The people came to trade fully armed, and
offered their wares to each other on their spear-
points; or else they would hold a bundle of skins with
one hand, and with the other a bared knife, in
readiness to raise a fight upon the slightest provo¬
cation (Bogoras 1904—09:53).

Between at least some nations, however, trade —
or some other kind of positive relations — must
have been established early enough for fairly
effective international and interlinguistic com¬
munication to have developed by the late 18th
century. For example, in 1791, the men of the
Billings Expedition met at Cape Rodney, on the
Seward Peninsula, North Alaskan Inupiat who
understood the "Chukchi” language — it actually
may have been Naukanski Yupik (Merck 1980: 186;
Sauer 1802:245). Also of interest is the fact that
Chukchi or Yupik-speaking people on Chukotka
knew the Inupiat names for many places on the
Alaskan coast, both at the time of the Billings
Expedition and earlier. By the second half of the
1 9th century, at least the leading native traders
in many areas probably were bilingual or mul¬
tilingual, and in areas such as the Chukotka
coast, where Chukchis and Yupik Eskimos were
in close contact, virtually the entire population
of some villages may have been bilingual (Men-
ovshchikov 1964:836).

A major event in the development of inter¬
continental trade in the Bering Strait region was
the establishment in 1789 of an annual market
at the juncture of the Aniui and Kolyma rivers,
some 800 miles west of Bering Strait. The Aniui
fair vastly increased the supply of European
goods available to the Chukchis, at the same
time creating an enormous demand for furs that
the Chukchi alone could not satisfy. To meet
this demand, they expanded their contacts with
people in Alaska, and a complex intercontinental
trade network quickly developed.

During the first half of the 19th century, trade
between Chukotka and Alaska probably reached
a peak, with the Chukchi acting as middlemen

313. War Club
Tsimshian?: NMNH 20610
Few weapons rival the elegance of
this fine wooden club, with the rav¬
en's beak for a striking point. The
form was probably derived from the
antler club of the Athapaskans (fig.
304). Two frogs crouch flanking the
grip and another, topped with a re¬
clining human figure, caps the club.
Between his folded wings, the raven
grasps another, inverted human. Ab-
alone shell once glittered in the wing
feathers. Such clubs were once true
weapons, and later were used as em¬
blems of chiefly rank. It is said they
were sometimes used to kill slaves on
ceremonial occasions.

234

314. "Tuski and Mahlemuts Trading
for Oil"

Henry W. Elliott, from Dali's Alaska
and Its Resources (1870)

Both hostile raids and peaceful trad¬
ing encounters, such as this one be¬
tween Chukchis (man, woman, and
child at left) and "Mahlemuts" (west¬
ern Alaskan Eskimos) haggling over a
sealskin filled with seal oil, have
probably occurred at Bering Strait
more or less continuously since
Asians first entered North America
12,000-14,000 years ago, resulting
in the flow of ideas, artifacts, mate¬
rials, and people between the two
continents.

315. Tobacco Pipes

Chukchi: MAE 434-38/1. Bering Sea
Eskimo: NMNH 176304

between the Alaskans, on the one hand, and the
Russians, on the other. The primary nodes of
the trade network at the beginning of the century
consisted of several native fairs in Alaska and a
number of government-organized winter Rus¬
sian-native fairs in Asia. The locations of these
fairs are shown in figure 316. In the early years
the goods that entered this system from the
Russian end were glass beads, iron, metal but¬
tons, articles of adornment, needles, pots, ket¬
tles, knives, spears, bells, scissors, and axes;
tobacco, a minor item in the early years, had
become perhaps the single most important one
by 1810. In return, the Russians received furs:
marten, beaver, red fox, white fox, muskrat,
river otter, lynx, and wolverine. Other trade
items received by the Russians were walrus
tusks, baleen (whalebone), seal and walrus skins,
bearskins, and a miscellaneous assortment of
manufactured goods. Strictly native elements in
the intercontinental trade were domesticated
Chukchi reindeer skins, for which there was a
growing demand in Alaska, and wood (for bows,
arrows, and other objects), which was in short
supply on Chukotka. Also involved in the pri¬
marily native trade was a diverse array of
manufactured goods, such as articles of clothing,
figurines, bowls, masks, and pipes, of which a

In the words of a Siberian proverb,
"The tobacco weed knows no
shame," and Chukchi legends even
tell of homicides committed to obtain
it. Its use was introduced by the Rus¬
sians, and tobacco grown in southern
Russia and Manchuria became the
most important item in Russian-Native
trade. Tobacco smoking, pipes and
chewing spread accross Bering Strait
and stimulated trade between the
Chukchi and Eskimo. The flared
metal bowls of native pipes such as
these Chukchi (top) and Nunivak Is¬
land Eskimo ( bottom ) examples were
modeled after Chinese pipes traded
in by the Russians. The stems of both
pipes can be opened to extract nico¬
tine-rich tar deposits used for mixing
with chewing tobacco.

sample is illustrated on these pages. These items
traveled both east and west and depended more
on the fancy of individual buyers than on a

235

lakutsk

East Siberian Sea

Nizhnekc

Verkhnekolymsf

Markovo 1800

Kamenskoe
1790 Q-

Sizhiginsk 1

Anadyr Be

Gizhiga Bay

Vannetat

' Jr □ Tumanskaia
□ ParaDQt^rr-Dol Fair 1800

/Albazin 1658-1684

Bering Sea

Sea of Okhotsk

Bol'sheretsk 1737/

sea otter

Pacific Ocean

Russian Trade Goods ra***®^

The Russian conquest of Siberia
( 1 5th— 1 8th centuries a.d.) and ex¬
pansion into Alaska ( 1 8th — 19th
_ centuries a.d.) was driven by prof¬
its from the fur trade. Russian
goods including tobacco, brick tea,
beads, firearms, iron implements,
kettles, needles, clothing, and
flour were expended to obtain val¬
uable furs: sable and fox from
Siberia, and sea otter, fur seal,
fox, beaver, lynx, marten, and
others from Alaska.

nadvfsk 1648

to Amursk

American Whalers

From the 1850s to the early 1900s
American whaling vessels traded
annually with the Chukchi and
North Alaskan Eskimo, obtaining
baleen and walrus ivory for alco¬
hol, firearms, ammunition, steel
knives and axes, porcelain,
needles, tobacco, clothing, and
flour. These goods were carried
west and east by Chukchi and
Alaskan native traders.

A □ Nizhne Kamchatsk

Verkhne-Kamchatsk
i Petrobavlovsk 1 740

Atka 1

- T

160°

140

Native Trade Across Bering
Strait

Ancient trade connections across
Bering Strait were expanded over
time as new products became
available. In increasing amounts
after the late 18th century, Rus¬
sian trade goods and Siberian rein¬
deer skins were being traded to
Alaskans for a variety of goods,
including furs, maritime products,
jade, and wood.

316. North Pacific Trade
Systems (ca. 1775-1900)

Trade fairs and extensive native ex¬
change networks existed long before
Russian contact. The colored arrows
show generalized movements of na¬

tive products, with some local spe¬
cialities highlighted. The dates of
Russian posts, sometimes built at the
same locations as ancient fairs, trace
the expansion of the Russian fur
trade across Siberia and southern

Alaska. New native fairs sprang up
as the volume of trade increased in
the 19th century. The movements of
Hudson's Bay Company and Ameri¬
can whaler goods are also shown.
Chinese and Japanese products, in¬

cluding tea, tobacco, pipes, beads,
and armor also entered the North Pa¬
cific exchange network, primarily via
Russian traders but also by way of
shipwrecks on American shores and
direct Japanese contacts in Kam-

236

Beaufon

Qaqturvik

Fort McPherson

Fort, Simpson

Fort Yukon 1847

Sheshalik

Hotham
fa Inlet,

Nulato 1839

copper

lovsku Redoubt 1

Yakutat BayW78§..

St. Constantine/g)
St. Helen 1793, A

t. Lawrence I.

Andrall

Koli

;kiiJ(St. Marys7^^: A
tekovskii. Redoubt 1 831

Ft. St. Nichol

Nuchj

lion Harbqi

Aleksandr^

^T^^bvskii 1792

P^modiak I.

Three Saints Bay 1 784

Bristol

Gulf of Alaska

Shumagin Is. 1742

Inalaska Is. 1773

Native Trade Products

Reindeer skins

Maritime products: sea mammal
oil, seal and walrus skins, ivory

Land peltries: sable, fox (Siberia);
fox, beaver, lynx, marten (Alaska)

Manufactures, etc.: clothing,
pipes, bowls, beadwork, dogs,
berries, wood, jade, chert

Arctic Ocean

a Pribilof Is.

* St. George I. 1787

chatka. Chinese coins were common
on the Northwest Coast, imported by
schooners trading directly with Can¬
ton. The Alaska Commercial Com¬
pany took over Russian posts in
Alaska after 1867. (Paula Brizee)

The busy prehistoric trade that
linked the peoples of coastal
southern Alaska and British Co¬
lumbia included: sea mammal oil,
ivory, and puffin beaks; caribou,
marmot, ground squirrel, and sea
otter skins; amber, copper, dental-
ium and abalone shells; boats,
goathorn spoons, and clothing. Af¬
ter contact, Russian, Hudson's Bay
Company, and American goods
entered the native trade system.

Novoarkhangel sk
(Sitka) 1799

Native Trade Fair
Russian Fort

Hudson's Bay Company Fort

317. Pipe Inlaid with Abalone
Haida: NMNH 6014
Thunderbird, octopus, men, and
monsters adorn this tobacco pipe that
has a bowl lined with sheet copper.

Hudson's Bay Company
The Hudson's Bay Company es¬
tablished Fort Yukon (1847) in
interior Alaska and Fort Victoria
(1843) and other posts in British
Columbia to compete with the
Russian fur traders. HBC trade
goods included sheet copper, blan¬
kets, tobacco, beads, firearms,
knives, and axes.

Pacific Coast Native Trade

237

Native Trade Products

Native Trade Across Bering
Strait

Reindeer skins

Maritime products: sea mammal
oil, seal and walrus skins, ivory

Land peltries: sable, fox (Siberia);
fox, beaver, lynx, marten (Alaska)

Manufactures, etc.: clothing,
pipes, bowls, beadwork, dogs,
berries, wood, jade, chert

Arctic Ocean

Beaufori\Sea

lakutsk

East Siberian Sea

Qaqturvik

Nizhnekc

Verkhnekolyms)*

Fori McPherson

Fortv Simpson i

Fort Yukon 18y )

Sheshalik

Markovo 1800

Kamenskoe
~> 17900-

■fizhiginsk 1'

Anadyr

Gizhiga Boy

VanneiaT

□ Tumanskaia I
TT-Dol Fair 1800

'‘Redoubt 18G

1658-1684

Yakutat Bay

Stantine'l)
f 1793 A

St. Lawrence 1.

to Amursk

Bering Sea

Ft. St. Nichoj;

jvskiLRedoubt 1 832

Sea of Okhotsk

Harbot

American Whalers

thne Kamchatsk

Aleksandr!

mhPjpovsWu 1792
fpjrodiak l.

Three Saints Bay 1 784

Verkhne-^amchatsl-

Bristol \

'o Pribilof Is.

^ St. George I. 1787

javlovsk 1740

Bolsheretsk 1737/ A

Gulf of Alaska

Shumagin Is. 1742

Jnalaska Is. 1773

Pacific Ocean

Russian Trade Goods

The Russian conquest of Siberia
( 15th— 1 8th centuries a.d.) and ex¬
pansion into Alaska ( 1 8th — 1 9th
centuries a.d.) was driven by prof¬
its from the fur trade. Russian
goods including tobacco, brick tea,
beads, firearms, iron implements,
kettles, needles, clothing, and
flour were expended to obtain val¬
uable furs: sable and fox from
Siberia, and sea otter, fur seal,
fox, beaver, lynx, marten, and
others from Alaska.

Novoarkhangelsk
(Sitka) 1799

Hudson's Bay Company

The Hudson's Bay Company es¬
tablished Fort Yukon (1847) in
interior Alaska and Fort Victoria
(1843) and other posts in British
Columbia to compete with the
Russian fur traders. HBC trade
goods included sheet copper, blan¬
kets, tobacco, beads, firearms,
knives, and axes.

\ \

Pacific Coast Native Trade

50 '

□ Native Trade Fair
a Russian Fort

O Hudson's Bay Company Fort

316. North Pacific Trade
Systems (ca. 1775-1900)

Trade fairs and extensive native ex¬
change networks existed long before
Russian contact. The colored arrows
show generalized movements of na¬

317. Pipe Inlaid with Abalone
Haida: NMNH 6014
Thunderbird, octopus, men, and
monsters adorn this tobacco pipe that
has a bowl lined with sheet copper.

236

237

318. Aniui Trade Fair
AMNH neg. 11125, Jesup Exp.

A crowd of Chukchi and Even gath¬
ers inside the gate of Fort Aniuisk in
the Kolyma River district during the
annual spring trade fair. Here Rus¬
sian traders bartered tobacco, knives,
and copper kettles for Siberian fox
and reindeer skins and Alaskan furs
and ivory obtained by Chukchi trad¬
ers from the Eskimos at Bering Strait.
One pud (36 lbs.) of tobacco was
worth ten red fox skins or 40 walrus
tusks.

widespread demand for the products concerned.

The major nodes in the trade network were
supplemented by a large number of smaller
ones. Indeed, for all practical purposes, every
Eskimo, Indian, and Chukchi settlement was a
trading center, and the normal routes by which
people traveled about the country were also
trade routes. The region encompassed by the
network that contributed directly to the inter¬
continental trade extended the whole way from
the middle Yukon River, in Alaska, to the Kolyma
River, in Siberia. This system, in turn, was
connected to others that spanned most of north¬
ern North America and northern and eastern
Eurasia.

The original Bering Strait trade network began
to be disrupted in the second decade of the 19th
century by European explorers. These men came
by ship, which enabled them to bring along a

good supply of trade goods and also to carry
home a substantial number of furs and native
artifacts. They were followed a decade or two
later by Russian traders based in southern Alaska,
who began to establish permanent posts along
the southern margin of the region of present
interest in the 1830s. The Hudson's Bay Com¬
pany, based in London, England, entered the
competition in 1847 with a post at Fort Yukon.
The locations of these posts are shown in figure
316. Both the explorers and the Alaska-based
traders acted to draw the Alaskan trade away
from the Chukchi, hence from the Russians.

The system changed again in 1848, when
American whalers discovered the rich whaling
grounds north of Bering Strait (Bockstoce 1986).
The whalers were followed or accompanied by
a number of small trading vessels, many of
which were based in the Hawaiian Islands and
therefore not subject to U.S. or Russian regu¬
lations at their home port. While the whalers
generally stayed out to sea during the early
years, the traders were in frequent contact with
natives on both the Asiatic and American coasts.
It was primarily through their efforts that fire¬
arms and whiskey, in addition to the more
traditional trade goods, arrived in native hands.
Later on, as whale stocks declined, the whalers
turned to taking walrus; when they had nearly
exterminated the walrus population, they turned
to trading. They also hired natives from both
Alaska and Chukotka to work for them, occa-

319. Tea Brick
AMNH 70-3846

Powdered Chinese tea, mixed with
sheep or ox blood as a binder and
compressed into bricks, was also an
important commodity in Russian-
Native trade. Tea was consumed in
prodigious quantities to ward off the
Siberian cold.

320. Tobacco and Snuff Boxes
North Alaskan Eskimo: NMNH
56512. Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH
33013

On the left is a beautifully rendered
carving in antler of a foetal caribou,
which held the owner's precious sup¬
ply of tobacco or snuff. Snuff taking
spread to Alaska along with the rest
of the Asian tobacco complex, and
many Alaskan snuff boxes are Asian
in design like the oval, baleen-covered
leather example on the right, from
Norton Sound. Its shape and inter¬
laced seam are derived from birch-
bark snuff boxes made by the Chuk¬
chi, Koryak, and other Siberian
groups. A birdbone snorting tube is
attached to the lid.

238

321. Koryak Tobacco Paraphernalia
AMNH 70-5123 (pipe); MAE
956-65a,b (box and beaded pouch)
This leather box covered with em¬
bossed birchbark and encased in a
beaded pouch was used by a Koryak
tobacco chewer to safeguard his or
her tobacco and half-chewed quids. It
has two compartments, each with its
own hinged lid. Chewing tobacco was
blended with ashes in both Siberia
and Alaska. The brass pipe decorated
with floral patterns and blue clois-
sone is Chinese in origin. The iron
pipe cleaners attached with chains
are another detail copied on some
pipes of native manufacture (fig. 315).

322. American Whalers
"A Northern Whaling Scene,"

Charles Scammon, 1874. Bomb gun
(Cunningham and Cogan, 1874),
NMAH 56334a

United States whaling vessels in the
Bering, Chukchi, and Okhotsk seas
after 1848 were a new source of ex¬
ternal contacts, trade, and social
change among coastal native peoples.
Bowhead whales were hunted from
open boats as in this illustration
(Scammon 1874) and the blubber
was rendered down aboard the whal¬
ing ship. The "bomb lance," an ex¬
plosive shell, was fired into a whale
after harpooning to kill the animal
before it could escape under the ice.
The bomb was shot from a massive
breech-loaded gun whose recoil often
floored or injured the gunner.

239

sionally carrying them eastward along the Arctic
coast to or beyond the Mackenzie River delta
(Nuligak 1966:36). Eventually, whalers took over
most of the coastal trade, as the supply of whales
became exhausted and the price of whale prod¬
ucts dropped dramatically. Together, these forces
cut the extensive east-west trade right at its
geographic center. For most of the second half
of the 19th century, Bering Strait continued to
be the focus of trade flowing westward from
Alaska, but it also drew the Chukchi trade
eastward, away from the Russians.

The early years of the 20th century saw a
continuation of the trends initiated in the last
quarter of the 19th. The whaling industry con¬
tinued to decline and pretty well disappeared
by about 1914. A few ship-borne traders con¬
tinued to travel the coasts of Chukotka and
Alaska, but they were increasingly replaced by

traders with permanent establishments on shore.
More important, the Russian and particularly the
United States governments began to keep offi¬
cials permanently based in the region. For the
first time, Great Power politics became an im¬
portant factor in native relations across Bering
Strait.

By 1900 disease, famine, and outside cultural
influences had so thoroughly disrupted life on
both sides of Bering Strait that the traditional
native nations had ceased to exist as viable
social units, and warfare — which had been on
the decline anyway — ceased along with them.
Interregional trade continued to take place, how¬
ever, although at a reduced level, and intercon¬
tinental trade specifically was still taking place
as late as the mid-1920s (Jenness 1929:78;
Rasmussen 1927:357). But, as the new Soviet
government extended its control to the Far East,
the US-USSR border — which runs between Big
and Little Diomede islands — gradually closed.
Native contacts across Bering Strait continued
at a greatly reduced rate but, for the most part,
became limited to social visits between relatives
and friends who had become dispersed over the
previous two decades. In the late 1940s, even
those contacts were brought to an end.

323. A 2,000 Mile Journey
Northen Ojibwa: AMNH 70-5873
Details of the beaded floral designs
on this cloth pouch identify its proba¬
ble place of origin as the Lake Winni¬
peg region in Manitoba, Canada —
nearly 2,000 miles east of the Chuk¬
chi Peninsula where it was collected
(Kate Duncan, pers. comm.). Other
Northern Ojibwa Indian objects are
also known to have made their way
to Alaska and British Columbia via
native trade networks, another re¬
minder of the long distance contacts
and influences that helped shape
North Pacific cultures.

324. Alaskan Bead and Dentalium
Shell Jewelry

Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 56070
(pair), NMNH 340331
Tubelike dentalium shells, illustrated
here on a pair of earrings from Bris¬
tol Bay, were rare and costly items in
the Pacific Coast trade network (cf.
fig. 316). Earrings and necklace are
combined in a single piece of jewelry
purchased on Nunivak Island in 1927
(below). Beads were saved and
reused for generations, so that this
piece includes a few early 19th-century
"wound" beads (dark blue-green ob-
lates) along with a variety of newer
tube and seed beads.

325. Chukchi Beads
Clockwise from lower left: AMNH
70-7455; 70-7267a,b; 70-7435;
70-7781a,b; 70-6620
A great variety of trade beads from
European and Chinese production
centers ended up in Siberia. Chukchi
bead jewelry was often accented by
bright bits of metal, like the brass
navy buttons on the center necklace
and the cartridge ends on the ear¬
rings. The uppermost strands of
beads in this grouping were for inter¬
twining with the hair of a woman's
braids.

240

S. Ia. Serov

326. Igor Shamanov, Shaman
Yukaghir: AMNH 70-5620a,b,c; 70-
5773a, b

This costume belonged to Igor Sha¬
manov, of the Yukaghir Alaseia clan.
(The term shaman originated as an
Evenk word.) Wearing it, Shamanov
drew upon the power vested in an¬
cestral shamans figured on his left
side, a vertebral design on his back
(fig. 417) and crosses, which for the
Chukchi represented birds (Bogoras
1904-09: 226), on his right side. Si¬
berian shamans considered their
coats to be bird skins, which enabled
them to achieve shamanic flight.

Spiritual life in Northeastern Siberia was or¬
ganized in accordance with deeply rooted myth¬
ological concepts. Narrative myths, which today
exist only in fragments linked to festivals, places,
or events, were preserved and transmitted in
oral tradition and ritual, frequently pantomimic,
dances. Stepan Krasheninnikov's (1755:77)
statement that "the general foundation of their
faith lies in ancient traditions, which they [the
Itelmen] observe more strictly than any law, and
which no proof of invalidity can affect,” is
applicable to every ethnic group of Northeastern
Siberia.

Guardians and Spirit-Masters of Siberia

241

Folklore and Cosmology

The folklore of the Chukchi, Siberian Eskimo.
Even, Koryak, and Itelmen is syncretic and
includes more than one style or folkloristic genre.
Thus, the Siberian Eskimo designate as ''tales''
a series of creation myths, accounts of magical
events, and animal stories, whereas life stories
and heroic tales belong to a different genre. The
most remarkable examples of origin myths are
found among the Chukchi and Siberian Eskimo.

The cosmos itself was conceived by the North¬
east Siberian peoples as a series of five, seven,
or nine vertically superposed worlds, "our world"
being the central layer. The sum of what was
considered material wealth (sea mammals, fish,
reindeer, and other animals and things), as well
as the number of people in the totality of the
worlds, was constant, so that one killed on earth
would add one to the population of another
world and vice versa. The Chukchi believed that
those who died on earth went to the sky world;
they were then reincarnated in their descendants
on earth and eventually went to the underground
world after their second death. According to
Krasheninnikov (1755:77), the Koryak and the
Itelmen believed "that the earth is flat and that
underneath it there is a sky similar to ours, with
another world below, whose inhabitants have
winter when we have summer, and summer
when we have winter."

There were numerous concepts concerning
the people of the upper world. According to
some, here lived the powerful protector of hu¬
man beings; according to others it was peopled
with the dead, who lived lives like people on
earth. The smoke of the funeral pyre was the

route to the sky for the deceased. The heros in
tales and myths, or the shamans during their
performance, traveled to the sky world through
holes made near the stars, or along a rainbow
or a sun ray, or on an eagle or a thunderbird.
In a Chukchi myth, light was given to man by
Raven, who with the help of a ptarmigan per¬
forated the membrane between two worlds with
his beak (Bogoraz 1939:40—43). The membrane
between worlds was believed to be so thin that
when the first tractor was introduced in the
village of Paren', an old woman feared it might
crush the inhabitants of the lower world (Gurvich
1987:84).

Scholars have pointed out that folkloristic
themes in the North Pacific region form two
blocks of material. On the one hand there is a
group of Koryak and Itelmen themes, and on
the other a group of Chukchi and Eskimo themes.
These relationships exist despite the lack of
linguistic ties within the folkloristic groups them¬
selves. Koryak and Itelmen are not linguistically
close, nor are Chukchi and Yupik Eskimo. Yet
Chukchi and Koryak, folkloristically separate, are
linguistically related. For example, the folklore
of the Aliutor is similar to the Koryak-Itelmen
block, whereas their language is related to Chuk¬
chi (Meletinskii 1979).

Among the central mythological figures of
northeastern Asia was Raven, named Kurkyl' by
the Chukchi, Koshkli by the Siberian Eskimo,
Kuikynniaku by the Koryak, and Kutkh by the
Itelmen. For the Chukchi and the Eskimo, Raven
was first of all the primeval figure whose major
exploit was obtaining light for the people. In the
majority of the texts Raven does not take part
in the creation of man. This was the task of a
creator whose image was amorphous. In other
versions, people emerged spontaneously from
various objects. Two major variants in the
"bringing of light" theme exist. In the Chukchi
variant, Raven pierces the membrane between
our world and an unlocalized world of spirits
that is sometimes good, sometimes evil, accord¬
ing to different versions, and dawn rises. In the

327. Kelet Myth
Chukchi: MAE 6010-38
This walrus tusk, carved at the Uelen
artist workshop in the 1940s (p.

317), illustrates a kelet, or evil spirit
legend. The kelet, a monster with
eight limbs and pointed head, cap¬
tures three women and hangs them
in a tree. When he returns to eat
them he finds they have escaped
across a river. "How did you cross?"
he asks. "We drank it dry," they re¬
ply. The kelet tries to drink the river,
but realizes he has been tricked. He
swims across and gives chase, but
his swollen belly bursts. The women
escape and vultures gather.

328. Ancestor Guardian and
Sacrificial Bowl

Chukchi: MAE 422-77; AMNH 70-
6690

Among many Siberian groups
"guardians" were worn to protect the
wearer from evil spirits. Most guardi¬
ans were made of wood and were
carved in simple human form, with
faces, torsos, and limbs, or simply as
Y-shaped crotches. This guardian was
an ancestor spirit that protected a
family's material goods.

Sacrificial slaughtering of dogs and
reindeer also was used to influence
spirits. More common were the ritual
sacrifices offered in place of live ani¬
mals. This segmented bowl was used
to offer blood and tallow to the four
"directions": dawn, zenith, evening,
and nadir.

329. The Koryak Raven Game
AMNH neg. 4150, Jesup Exp.

This photograph shows the beginning
of the Raven game in which Raven
(left) seeks to capture the young rav¬
ens holding coattails behind Mother
Raven, opposite him, beginning with
the last in line.

242

330. Koryak Child's Cremation
AMNH neg. 6468-4129, Jesup Exp.
While Jochelson was working among
the Koryak, a young girl died. After
being dressed in funeral clothes (fig.
341), she was carried to the crema¬
tion place and laid on the pyre. Her
possessions were buried in a small
hole so that she would not return
home for them, and a set of women's
tools was placed on the pyre, to¬
gether with a bag of gifts intended
for those who had died the previous
year. Then the fire was lit. When the
body was consumed, alder and wil¬
low bushes were strewn around the
pyre, and rituals were performed to
keep her spirit from following the fu¬
neral party home.

other, entering the lighted world, Raven steals
from a little girl, the daughter of an evil spirit
(kele), her balls containing the celestial bodies.
By breaking the balls Raven frees and puts into
the sky Sun, Moon, and the stars. This second
variant was widespread in Chukotka and among
Alaskan Natives and even occurs in South Amer¬
ica.

For Koryak and Itelmen, Raven was primarily
an ancestor figure. He was called Creator in
shamanistic incantations but not in myths. The
celestial bodies existed before the earth, so that
in local Koryak-Itelmen myths (but also in some
Chukchi myths). Raven created only the earth.
People were born from an incestuous marriage,
repeated in the next generation, between Rav¬
en's son and daughter. Among the Chukchi, the
incestuous brother and sister were not connected
with the Raven cycle.

Raven as a cultural hero, however, was a
common motif for both the Koryak-Itelmen and

Chukchi-Eskimo blocks. In Georg W. Steller's
and Krasheninnikov's accounts, natives of Kam¬
chatka believed that Kutkh taught people how
to sew clothing from leaves and hides, to weave
fishnets, to build canoes, and to beat the drum.
The departure of Raven from earth after fulfilling
his duty is characteristic of Kamchatka myths.
There is no promise from Raven that he will
return. His departure is linked to the creation of
mountains and hills, which were formed under
Raven's skis. Kutkh' s anthropomorphism as he
departed was so strongly expressed that neither
S teller nor Krasheninnikov suspected his identity
as Raven.

Another image of Raven, clearly demonstrated
in Koryak-Itelmen myths, is that of the trickster.
Raven's erotic adventures are well known and
were probably responsible for Krasheninnikov's
remark that Itelmen (Kamchadal) tell of Kutkh
"such obscenities that it would be too indecent
to write them down'' (1755:73). The Chukchi,
unlike the Kamchatka natives, distinguished the
personalities of Raven in different genres: he is
a creator and cultural hero in the myths and a
trickster in the tales. The Siberian Eskimo bor¬
rowed Raven stories from Chukchi folklore. The
Raven theme is hardly developed in Yukaghir
and Even mythology.

The myth of the girl who did not want to
marry was known in the Chukchi and Eskimo
region. This myth culminates in her creation of
people and sea animals, and she becomes Mis¬
tress of the Sea. Known as Sedna among the
Canadian Inuit (Eskimo), she was usually called
Samna or Sana (she "who lives below") by
Asiatic Eskimo. The Reindeer Chukchi, having
borrowed this theme from the Eskimo, created
a version in which the woman did not end up in
the sea but went to the tundra, where she
created people, reindeer, and sea animals.

Raven's deeds were still being told in the 20th
century but only in reference to the creation of
the world. The belief in spiritual animism of
places and things survives today. In the 1940s,
Siberian Eskimo texts about the Master of the
Upper World, called Kiiagnyk, were recorded. A
similar deity, the Chukchi god Tynagyrgyn
("Dawn"), was also present in the Eskimo pan¬
theon alongside other deities. The Eskimo Mis¬
tress of the Sea is Samna; for the Chukchi, this
role was taken by a male character, Keretkun.
He and his wife were the masters of all sea
animals. The name of the master or spirit of
each forest, river, hill, was not always known,
but their existence was not doubted, and a lucky
hunt or a safe camp had to be guaranteed by a
sacrifice, often symbolic, to the master of the
place.

243

Spirits and Souls

According to Bogoras, the Chukchi believed that
every object had "a voice” (master-soul), lived
a life like that of people, and could express its
will. A person's soul was like the soul of an
object, an animal, or a plant, although the soul
of a plant was small and weak. A person, besides
his main soul (which governed the whole body),
also had souls in different organs. When a limp
developed or an inner organ was sick or wounded,
it was believed that the soul of this part of the
body had been lost. Even human waste was
thought to be capable of animation. In similar
fashion, Northeast Asians viewed most phenom¬
ena of the natural world in anthropomorphic
terms, and some species were thought to live
in communities similar to men's. For example,
there were polar bear people, mouse people,
wolf people, and spider people, but there were
no wild reindeer people or seabird people (Kru-
shanov 1987:89).

Beliefs in metamorphosis and animation of
objects were closely connected. For the Koryak,
as for the Eskimo (fig. 45), killer whales turned
into wolves in winter when the sea was frozen
and hunted reindeer on land like they hunted
whales in the sea. As in many areas of the
northern hemisphere, the black bear was thought
to be a human in a bear skin.

People could turn into animals, and vice versa,
although this belief was not formulated as such.
But in myths and tales, it was obvious that when
a human and an animal met, the animal, although
retaining his name, had a human shape. The

"All that exists lives. The lamp walks around. The
walls of the house have voices of their own. Even
the chamber-vessel has a separate land and house.
The skins sleeping in the bags talk at night. The
antlers lying on the tombs arise at night and walk in
procession around the mounds, while the deceased
get up and visit the living.”

(Chukchi shaman quoted in Bogoras 1904—09:281)

principles of zoomorphism and anthropomorph¬
ism were sometimes more concrete. In tales of
the Greenlandic, American, and Siberian Eskimo,
the soul of a deceased person reincarnated
successively into a dog, a bear, a wolf, a fox,
and a bird. In another Eskimo tale, known under
many variations as "the woman who delivered
a whale," a whale used to meet his lover, not
in the form of a whale but as a man coming out
of the nose of the whale and who is the whale's
soul. The husband of the woman struck the
whale lying on the beach with his spear, but the
whale did not die until the "man," leaving the
woman, entered the whale's nostril again (Men-
ovshchikov 1987:16—26). It seems that the whale's
soul, returning to the body, received the same
wound, and only then did the actual death of
the body occur.

The idea of metamorphosis was represented
in Old Bering Sea art through polyiconic forms
(visual puns). An amulet from Ekven (Arutiunov
and Sergeev 1975:plate 80.18) combines fea¬
tures of five different animals. Heads of a killer
whale and a wolf, transformationally related,
were carved on opposite ends of the amulet.
Such links between animal species, including
man, continue to be reflected in the art of the
Chukotka-Alaska region.

Spirits of the home (guardians) and the per¬
sonal amulets were often anthropomorphic. The
wooden fireboards (figs. 243, 260, 331) used to
light the ritual fire in the home were always
carved in human form. Guardian spirits were

331. Chukchi Guardians
Andres Slapinsh photo, 1983.
Chukchi: AMNH 70-7810
Among many guardians, one of the
most important was the sacred fire-
board (fig. 243) which was used with
a firedrill to light the family fire.
Koryak and Chukchi fireboards were
given simple human form.

Because the world was full of spir¬
its, many of which could cause mis¬
fortune, a thoughtful person carried a
charm string in a leather pouch
around one's neck. Each charm, or
okamak, represented a particular
guardian and had a designated name.
This string includes a large number
of male charms, and a special fur-
wrapped female charm known as
"the wooden woman" or "the mis¬
tress." Charms made of animal parts
are also seen on this string.

244

332. Man's Funeral Cap
Koryak: MAE 956-82
Koryak funeral ritual involved the
preparation of elaborate funerary cos¬
tumes. This man's funeral cap, like
other parts of the costume, was made
of white reindeer fawn fur onto
which were stitched geometric piece¬
work designs, embroidered bands,
dyed wool tassels, and ruffs of the
downy hair of young seals.

often represented by a forked branch looking
like a body with legs (figs. 182, 210, 338, 345).
Personal guardian spirits made of wood or animal
hide were sewn to the clothing, worn at the belt,
or hung around the neck. When sick, the Chukchi
tattooed their hands and faces with humanlike
figures to chase away the spirits of disease. A
Chukchi might tattoo on his shoulders a repre¬
sentation of the soul of someone he had killed,
to turn the soul into his helper.

There were cases when the relationship be¬
tween a person and his or her guardian spirit
was expressed in marital terms. Among the
Chukchi, these partners were called Ritual Wife
or Ritual Husband. It is probably these super¬
natural "members of the family" that Krashen-
innikov observed among the sedentary Koryak
in the person of two stones, the larger one being
the "wife” and the smaller the "son" of a Koryak
man. According to Krasheninnikov (1755:164),
these stones were "dressed with clothing, put
to bed with [the Koryak], and occasionally joked
and played with." The same type of spirit was
contained in leather fertility dolls that were
passed down for generations from mother to
daughter.

Spirits were sometimes considered neutral,
or even benevolent, but most of the time were
aggressive and offensive. Even souls of dead
relatives might, as among the Asian Eskimo,
become dangerous after a few years when they

began to long for company and tried to capture
the souls of their kinfolk. Evil spirits were those
of dead people who had led evil lives. To protect
against them, the earth or snow around the
dwelling was sprinkled with human urine or with
old lamp oil. Besides family and personal amu¬
lets, firearms and weapons, and especially drums,
were most effective for protecting against evil
spirits because these spirits did not like loud
noises.

Evil spirits (kelets) lived, according to Chukchi
belief, in the upper world or underground, but
not in the sea. Otherwise, they inhabited a wild
world, symmetrical to man's, on the other side
of a vertical separation. The kelets had various
appearances, but they were, as a rule, much
larger or smaller than humans and had ugly
pointed heads. Evil spirits were associated with
the color black and are shown in drawings with
black faces. Keretkun, Master of the Sea Animals,
was represented as a tall, mean-looking man
with a black face. The faces of sick people were
commonly painted with black graphite among
Siberian Eskimo and Maritime and Reindeer
Chukchi to deceive the spirits of sickness into
believing that the sick man was not a human
whose soul could be stolen but another spirit.
The image of a helping spirit bringing to his
shaman master a red or a black garment rep¬
resented, in Bogoras's analysis, the choice given
to the shaman to become a benevolent or an
evil shaman. Even though one must be cautious
with too specific an interpretation, one cannot
help noting in the color symbolism of the people
of Northeast Asia that black was the color of the
other world and of death, while red was the
color of life. Face and hand painting with red
ocher or the blood of a sacrificed animal was an
important element in Chukchi wedding and fu¬
neral rituals. Ceremonial and shamanistic gar¬
ments were ornamented with red tassels of
twisted wool or fur.

Red and black were conflicting colors, whereas
white played a neutral role. Among the Siberian
Eskimo, an aging shaman's loss of strength was
symbolized by his wearing of white clothing,
which was also the color of funeral garments. A
combination of all three colors was used on
divination sticks of Eskimo weather-tellers. This
color symbolism was applied to the sacred realm
only; in everyday life, white garments were
thought to be the most beautiful.

The cult of ancestors existed among all peoples
of Chukotka and Kamchatka. The Koryak sacri¬
ficial places near the settlements were called
Grandfather or Grandmother.

245

"We are surrounded by enemies. 'Spirits' always
walk about invisibly with gaping mouths. We are
always cringing, and distributing gifts on all sides,
asking protection of one, giving ransom to another,
and unable to obtain anything whatsoever gratui¬
tously." (Shaman quoted in Borogas 1904—09:294)

333. Tasseled Shaman's Hat
AMNH neg. 337173, Jesup Exp.
Yukaghir: AMNH 70-387
Household shamans like this Koryak
woman performed routine rituals and
wore no special clothing. Professional
shamans, who could also be women,
had elaborate costumes. This Yu¬
kaghir shaman's hat is made from
the short white-and- brown fur taken
from the legs of reindeer and has the
long fur tassels that were also char¬
acteristic of Even shaman's hats. The
color division, white on the wearer's
right side, dark on his left, signified
the shaman's dual role, participating
in the world of men (light) and the
world of shades and spirits (dark¬
ness). Beads, dyed moosehair embroi¬
dery, and brass bells and rings (not
visible, but see cover illustration)
complete the ornamentation.

Yakut and Evenk shamans fes¬
tooned their coats with metal chains,
spirit figures, and ornaments. These
jingling attachments aided in attract¬
ing friendly spirits.

Shamanism

Shamans in Chukotka and Kamchatka could be
either men or women. Among these maritime
groups, there was no sharp distinction between
professional shamans and others, as found else¬
where in Siberia. As a matter of fact, individual
and familial shamanism prevailed. For instance,
a hunter might, when required, attempt to fore¬
see the future, heal the sick, and fight evil spirits
with shamanistic weapons; and a community
shaman who was economically supported by his
kin helped his family first of all.

I. S. Vdovin distinguishes two forms of sha¬
manistic performance among the Chukchi. One
is a mass performance based on general religious
concepts and oriented towards the ancestors
and personified forces. The other is the individual
performance. The view that shamanism is a form
of religion, common in 1930s ethnography in
the USSR, is not shared by Vdovin, A. P. Oklad¬
nikov, and other scholars who define shamanistic
faith as belief in the connection between the
shaman and evil spirits and see the shaman's
role as defending people against these evil
forces.

The lack of a separate category of professional
shaman is consistent with the lack of a shaman¬
istic costume. The Maritime Chukchi and Eskimo
shaman's robe was decorated only with tassels
and pendants of seal pup fur. There was no
special headdress among the maritime people,
although Reindeer Chukchi shamans grew their
hair long and braided it. An exception among
the Eskimo was the special white clothing worn
when foretelling the weather during the whale

246

334. Hat of a "Transformed" Shaman
Yukaghir: AMNH 70-5620
The small leather cylinders seen on
the top of Shamanov's hat (right) are
symbolic antlers, equivalent to the
iron antlers on Evenk shaman hats
(fig. 335). Faces of wolmadono repre¬
senting shades of deceased shamans
are stitched into each prong.

In addition to his tasseled hat, Sha¬
manov wore a tasseled, fringed apron
(fig. 326), a woman's garment style.
Men's aprons did not have fringes. In
addition to adopting women's cloth¬
ing, sexually ’transformed" Siberian
shamans adopted female language
and behavior.

Tassels were made from the soft
fur of the young spotted seal, dyed
red with an infusion of the inner bark
of larch and alder. Emblematic of
Siberian spirit life, they were used
both as insignia and as lively swing¬
ing omamanets on costumes and
amulets.

335. Antlered Shaman's Hat
Evenk: AMNH 70-5772d
Evenk shamans' hats, like the one at
the far right, are often decorated
with iron antlers representing the
wild reindeer, whose spirit (ge'lken)
was the special protector of this sha¬
man. Another class of spirit, probably
representing ancestral shamans, as in
fig. 334, float across the brow, and
appear as tasseled stick figures with
beaded circular heads along the
sides.

ceremony. Bogoras (1939:136) saw the lack of
a shamanistic outfit among the Maritime Chukchi
as a result of their performances' taking place
mainly in the bed chamber ( polog ), which was
so hot when everyone was gathered inside that
elaborate garments could not be worn. Narrow
white fringes on the sleeves and applique de¬
signs were borrowed from Tungus-speaking
neighbors, but these coats were worn only
when performances were held outside or in the
cold part of the dwelling (Prokof'eva 1971:56,
48-50).

The Yukaghir shaman's coat was originally a
plain female coat. By the end of the 1 9th century
it had been exchanged for a coat characteristic
of the Tungus-speaking groups symbolizing a
bird, eagle, or stork (figs. 326, 417). The apron
and boots remained those of a woman. The Even
shaman's outfit was similar to the Evenk's. The
left part of the coat was made of dark suede and
the right part of light suede, a sign of the
shaman's belonging to two worlds (cf. fig. 333).
The apron, similar to a woman's, and the pen¬
dants on the back were embroidered with rep¬

resentations of spirits. The headdress had iron
antlers, and on the gloves were tufts of bear fur
to symbolize the shaman's designated helping
spirit, or protector.

Eighteenth-century travelers in Kamchatka
noticed the plain look of male and female sha¬
mans. The only exception seems to have been
among the Kerek, whose shamans were dressed

247

336. Toy Drum
Chukchi: AMNH 70-6548
Chukchi drums, made of walrus
stomach tissue stretched on a bent¬
wood hoop, are similar to the drums
used by Asiatic and Alaskan Eskimo,
and different from those used by
other Siberian groups. This toy drum
is played with a baleen stick.

in long, open embroidered robes trimmed with
dog fur, and fur caps with tassels (cf. fig. 293).
The Chukchi and Koryak considered Kerek sha¬
mans to be the most powerful of all (Leont'ev
1983:60).

One usually became a shaman after a reve¬
lation. The shamanistic call could result from
apparitions of spirits in dreams or during sick¬
ness, or from a voice heard while hunting. But
few shamans were strong enough to subordinate
the spirits, who were not always willing to come
when called. If angry for some reason, the spirit
might leave the shaman or punish him. For the
Chukchi, the spirits were far from being friendly
to one another. When called by the shaman,
they quarreled, and only the shaman's persua¬
sive entreaties and threats could pacify them.

The performance ( kamlanie ) was the most
important activity of the shaman. It varied be¬
tween ethnic groups, within a single group, and
even within one settlement according to the
strength and reputation of the shaman. Both in
Chukotka and in Kamchatka, fly agaric, the
mushroom Amanita muscaria, was consumed,
by men only, before the kamlanie. Krashenin-
nikov noted that the Itelmen "affirm that what¬
ever madness they may display is, invisibly,
ordered by the fly-agaric'' (1755:109—10). The
Cossack Efrem Purgin, who spent 30 years
among the Koryak in the 18th century, noted
that to strengthen the power of the intoxicating
mushroom the participants, after eating the
mushroom, "pour their urine into a bowl or a
cup and drink it again” (Kos'ven 1962:280).

According to the Chukchi, fly agaric took people
by the hand and led them along a crooked path
into the land of the dead (Bogoraz 1939:5).
During the kamlanie, hallucinations were often
provoked by self-hypnosis through singing and
drum beating (cf. fig. 153).

Chukchi drums were similar to drums used
by the American and Siberian Eskimo — circular,
with an outside wooden handle; the membrane
was made of walrus stomach. Drumsticks were
of two kinds: a small baleen stick for perform¬
ances inside the polog and a longer wooden one
for outside. Drums of the Yukaghir, Even, Ko¬
ryak, and Itelmen were oval and were held by
a handle inside the drum frame. Except among
the Eskimo and Chukchi, ritual drums were
different from dancing drums. Ritual drums had
bells and metal rings inside and sometimes grass
or rag dolls and beads. When a shaman died,
his drum was broken and was laid on his grave
so that its spirit could become a new drum in
the otherworld. The drumstick remained in the
family to be used for divination.

For the kamlanie in the polog, the shaman
undressed to the waist, doused the lamp, and
asked the participants to be seated and to remain
silent, since otherwise the spirits might not
come. Then the shaman started to sing rapidly,
beating his drum. Lesser shamans, using incan¬
tations, received some information from the
spirits during this simple performance. Powerful
shamans, however, sang themselves into a trance,
during which their soul traveled on the "boat”
(the drum) to the lower world to divine the
future or retrieve the soul of a sick person. In
contrast to North America, masks were not worn
by Asian shamans. The language the shaman
used with spirits was not intelligible to ordinary
people; sometimes it was another real dialect or
just sounds without content.

Women were considered better shamans than
men, as in most ecstatic cults. The phenomenon
of change of sex, noticed among the Koryak and
Itelmen, may have been related to this. A male
shaman not only dressed as a woman but also

337. Magic Surgery
Chukchi: AMNH 70-6793, 70-6792
Scratching-Woman, a transvestite
shaman, told Bogoras he operated on
sick people with these tools. Tied to
the iron knife is a huge glass bead
obtained by his grandather from the
kelets. The ivory "knife" (an old ar¬
mor plate) was a present from the
Milky Way. Its leather images include
a kelet from the direction of dark¬
ness, with arms longer than its legs
(left); the kelet Iumetun (center),
with one arm and one leg and verti¬
cal eyes; and on the right, a crawling
kelet sent by an enemy to attack him,
but which he subdued and tamed.

248

338. Sun-Worm and Divining
Guardian

Koryak: AMNH 70-3594
Chukchi: MAE 422-59
This Sun-Worm doll, a guardian of
women, has fur clothing, beady eyes,
a fur tail, and a hexagonal nut strung
on a lanyard. The body contains a
worm, "the vivifying one," that falls
from the sky into a woman's root
basket and protects her from sterility.

The suspended guardian is used
for divining. The soothsayer holds the
guardian in the air and asks it ques¬
tions. If the answer is "yes," the
guardian swings; if "no," it remains
motionless.

339. Shaman's Leggings

Even: 70-5773a,b
Tassels and embroidered spirit fig¬
ures and other designs were embroi¬
dered onto this set of shaman leg¬
gings. Though they were collected
from the Even, the style indicates Ev¬
enk (Tungus) influence.

340. Divining Pouch
Chukchi: AMNH 70-6691
Appended to this divining pouch
made of reindeer skin is a polished
chunk of graphite. When in use the
bag probably held soothsayer's
bones.

adopted women's manners and work. Many
cases of men turning into women and vice versa
were known among the Chukchi and Siberian
Eskimo. This was apparent in transvestism and
in changes of hairstyle, voice, and manners. In
such cases, men spoke the female dialect and
women the male dialect. Among the Koryak,
where no specifically shamanistic outfit existed,
the shaman sometimes wore one female boot
and one male boot during the kamlanie. A
transformed shaman kept his or her original
male or female name. Complete change of sex —
both in attitude, behavior, and physical fea¬
tures — was present in Northeast Siberian folk-
loric texts. A transformed woman did not par¬
ticipate in male activities, but a "soft," womanlike
man did women's work. In the context of the
belief in metamorphosis and change of sex, this
phenomenon is difficult to separate from a larger
tradition of homosexuality, especially since, as
Bogoras noticed, homosexuality occurred mainly
during youth.

Divination and Family Ritual

Besides curing, the basic duty of a shaman was
the divination of weather and of movements of
sea animals and other game. Such information
could be obtained during a kamlanie but in
general was sought before the first hunt of the
year with the help of a drumstick tied to the
head of the umialik, the whaleboat captain.
Speaking the right answer, the umialik felt his
head becoming light. The Itelmen practiced
levitation with the leg, which the shaman tried
to lift with a red string at each question.

Seal scapulae (shoulder blades) or, among the
Reindeer Chukchi and Even, reindeer scapulae
were used for divination. Coastal groups also
divined with whale scapulae in the whale cere¬
mony. In the latter case, the shaman applied
burning charcoal to the scapula and interpreted
the cracks that appeared. The information sought
was the location and movements of whales and
the paths their spirits took in returning to the
sea after the ceremonies.

The most common method of divination was
to suspend a stone, wooden amulet, or animal
skull, which would swing when the correct
answer to a question was given. The name of a
newborn baby was chosen this way. Since it
was believed that an ancestor had been rein¬
carnated as the baby, the names of deceased
relatives were pronounced by women while
observing a stone amulet (anthropomorphic
among the Koryak) suspended from a tripod or
bipod made of sticks, which swung at the name
of the reincarnated relative. The Even announced
the birth of a baby boy by saying, "Father is
back!” or for a baby girl, "Father returned, but

he wanted to be a woman.” The name of an
Even baby (i.e., of a reincarnated relative) was
guessed when the baby was old enough to speak
by interpreting his or her responses to questions
posed when held in the arms of the paternal
grandmother. For the Kerek, a little boy was the
reincarnation of his maternal grandfather, and
if the latter was still alive, the great-grandfather.
A little girl was the reincarnation of her maternal
grandmother or great-grandmother. The name
was given accordingly.

To avoid being found by evil spirits, for ex¬
ample after a serious illness, one could change
one's name during life, but only with great
danger. The new name was often insulting or
ugly-sounding. In the Eskimo tale "The boy from
Chaplino,” the boy takes the name of his de¬
ceased brother, thinking that the "upper peo¬
ple,” believing him dead, would not take him
with them. Taking a new name was equivalent
to killing the bearer of the old name and being
born again.

Numerous rules and taboos surrounded the
periods before, , during, and after delivery. As
soon as a Chukchi woman knew she was preg¬
nant, she had to look with her husband, at dawn,
toward the rising sun, the dwelling place of
benevolent spirits. Similarly, a Koryak woman
had to go to the community shrine to ask
protection, burn pieces of fat, meat, and hare
fur, and sacrifice strings of colored beads. A
pregnant Even woman was accompanied by an
experienced woman who made sure she ob¬
served rules that, like postnatal rules, had both
hygienic and symbolic aspects. A pregnant woman

249

was forbidden to visit or receive guests at her
home, to see other pregnant women, to touch
fishnets and other tools, to go out at night, or
to eat fatty foods.

At the delivery the Even usually called a
midwife to massage the stomach of the pregnant
woman and deliver the baby. In the iaranga
(skin tent) all curtain ties had to be untied, and
all lids were left off the pots to facilitate the
baby's exit. The midwife cut a boy's umbilical
cord with his father's knife and a girl's with her
mother's. Then the baby was wiped with soft
wood shavings, placed on a board, and wrapped
in skins. The Chukchi cut the umbilical cord with
a stone knife, then wiped the baby with a bunch
of grass soaked in the mother's urine, and then
burned the grass. The Itelmen laid the baby in
soft grass. The Even buried the placenta, but
the sedentary Chukchi and Koryak placed it
outside the dwelling, under a symbolic shelter.
Krasheninnikov thought the placenta was thrown
away to be eaten by dogs, who in Kamchatka
and Chukotka were enemies of evil spirits (fig.
342). For the first days after a birth, a Chukchi
man could enter the bed chamber only after
being purified by a neighbor's household deity
or by holding a puppy against his body.

After delivery, the mother's abdomen was
bound with straps for three days; she then put
on new clothing, or if old clothing was worn, it
had to be purified in the smoke from the ritual
hearth. On the fifth day the mother, the newborn,
the family amulets, and three of the six poles of

Funeral Practice

Among the natives of Kamchatka and Chukotka,
concepts about the organization of the world
and the relationship between humans and su¬
pernatural beings were clearly defined in the
funeral rites. Four means of transferring the
dead from this world to the next coexisted in
this region: fire (cremation), earth (subsurface
burial), air (surface burial), and water (disposal
at sea). However, cremation and surface burial
prevailed.

In instances of voluntary death, known among
Chukchi and Koryak, an individual requested
death by spear or strangulation at the hands of
a friend or relative and was burned together
with his or her belongings. In cases of natural
death, more elaborate rituals were conducted
that began with wiping the body with a bundle
of grass to signify that the person departing
from this world was being born in another. The
corpse was then dressed in fine white funeral
clothing (figs. 278, 332, 341). The Koryak put
the deceased's right glove on the left hand and

the dwelling were painted with reindeer blood.
Only then was the baby given a name (Bogoraz
1939:175-76; Popova 1981:158-63).

Marriage among the people of Chukotka and
Kamchatka was an individual ceremony, al¬
though certain forms of group marriage were
preserved. Associated with marriage was the
custom of bride work. The conditions and length
of the groom's obligation to the parents of the
bride were discussed in advance. At the end of
the period of bride work among the Koryak and
Itelmen, the groom had to catch the bride outside
her house and touch her genitals as a ritual of
possession. This was not easy because as soon
as the bride's parents assented, the bride bun¬
dled herself up in several combination suits over
which she strapped belts and nets. If she herself
did not resist, at least her female friends and
kin harassed the groom to hinder his efforts. If
thwarted, he might try again later, but should
he fail decisively, he forfeited compensation for
his bride work.

Usually, the young couple lived at the hus¬
band's parents' house. The wedding ceremony
per se included a sacrifice to the household
deity, painting the spouses' faces, and a feast.
Krasheninnikov remarked that in an Itelmen
wedding in 1739, people on the way to the
groom's house recited incantations to a dry fish
head, which was later placed at the foot of the
entry ladder for all to step on, before being
burned in the ritual hearth.

the left glove on the right hand and harnessed
the reindeer drawing the corpse in reversed
order. The Koryak sacrificed a grown dog to
take the place of the dead in the house during
the funeral rites, and the Chukchi sacrificed a
dog pup.

The deceased was then taken from the house,
not through the regular door but through a
special hole cut in the wall. Later, this hole was
carefully mended so that the soul of the deceased
could not find its way back into the house to
take souls of the living. For the same reason the
Koryak of the Okhotsk Sea coast left the funeral
location three times, two of them being false
departures in which the mourners covered their
tracks by placing a stone or drawing a line across
the path to prevent the spirit of the deceased
from following the funeral party back to the
village. Once the body had been laid at the
chosen place, cuts were made on the stomach
and the throat to free the soul. The sled and
weapons left near the corpse were then broken

250

341. Man's Cremation Costume
Koryak: AMNH 70-2888, 70-2887a,b,
70-3234a,b

A Koryak funeral costume included a
parka, leggings, boots, hat, and
quiver (fig. 227), all made from the
white fur of reindeer fawns. Months
in the making, costumes had to be
worked on at night, secretly; if the
garments were seen, or work was
completed in advance, death would
soon follow. As a result, the days be¬
tween death and cremation were
ones of feverish, sleepless work.
While the women sewed, the men
passed the time playing cards upon
the deceased, whose body was dis¬
played in the house.

251

to serve the dead in the other world. Reindeer
(among the Reindeer Chukchi and Koryak) and
dogs (among the maritime peoples) were sac¬
rificed at the funeral place. A sacrificed dog was
left on the grave, his entrails exposed in loops.
These loops represented the crooked path taken
by the deceased's spirit to the otherworld. To
facilitate this travel the Chukchi left two iaranga
poles, termed legs, at the grave site; the Koryak
cut the soles of the funeral boots. The body was
then either left on the ground to be eaten by
dogs and wild animals or, more often, cremated
on a log pyre, its soul rising to the sky world in
the column of smoke (fig. 330).

Subsurface burial as a funeral rite was known
but was not common in the area. Another funeral
custom found among the Maritime Koryak and
Kerek was disposal of dead in the sea, after
having pierced the side of the corpse with a
knife to insure "drowning.'' The Even laid their
dead both on the ground or on a platform in a
tree. The Itelmen buried babies in hollow trees.

After the funeral, the participants had to be
purified. In the Koryak purification ritual (Gurv-
ich 1980:174—75, 202—22, 239), those returning
to the village were met by the women and girls
who had not participated in the funeral, who
whipped the men with branches or fumigated
them with burning sticks and sometimes sprin¬
kled water on them. The Itelmen ritual involved
crawling through hoops of green twigs. Similar
rituals were common among many Eurasian
peoples, who performed them to cure disease
and during festivals. The hoops of green branches
represented life-giving natural forces. By passing
through the hoops one symbolically passed from
an old or bad period of life into a new one,
reborn and purified. For a sick person, the
Itelmen made a "door” with the entrails of a
dog between two vertical poles and walked
through it with the sick person.

342. Koryak Dog Sacrifice
AMNH neg. 1562, Jesup Exp.

Among the Koryak the sacrifice of
live animals included only dogs,
while among the Reindeer Koryak
and Even, it also included reindeer.
Associated with the eastern spread of
reindeer breeding, live sacrifice was
present among the Reindeer Chukchi,
but not among Maritime Chukchi,
Asian Eskimo, or peoples of north¬
western North America.

To guard against evil spirits Kor¬
yak dogs were stabbed in the heart
and were displayed wearing grass
collars on poles around the village.

252

Festival Cycles

343. Eider Duck Ceremony
AMNH neg. 1322, Jesup Exp.

This photograph shows a group of
Asian Eskimos performing an eider
duck ceremony that was similar in
concept to the Chukchi Keretkun cer¬
emony. Like the latter, it utilized a
net and a central pole with painted
designs. Four model ducks slid on
lines controlled by the participants.
As the lines were manipulated, caus¬
ing the ducks to soar and dive, the
principals blew mouth whistles that
produced sounds like the shrill cries
of eiders.

344. Keretkun Net and Prayer Paddle
AMNH 70-6566 (net), 70-6932
Keretkun, Master of the Sea, was
honored in an annual harvest renewal
ceremony. In this ceremony, a net
with model gulls and paddles at¬
tached to it was suspended from the
ceiling of the dwelling and a special
pole passed through the net and cen¬
tral smoke hole into the air above.
From the net hung model gulls and
paddles with designs painted in seal
blood. Also used in the ceremony
was a "prayer paddle" that conveyed
entreaties to Keretkun for the re¬
newal of animals and hopes for fu¬
ture hunting success.

A yearly cycle of seasonal festivals, including
hunting (harvest) festivals and celebrations of
an occasional nature, were held throughout
Northeastern Siberia. The latter were organized
if someone was instructed to do so in a dream
or for rites of passage, such as a young man's
hunting initiation, or for other special events.
Annual celebrations did not take place on fixed
days but were held within specific seasons. They
lasted from one to two days to several weeks.

There was no difference in the way individual,
family, or community festivals were organized.
Tradition held that the festivals were open to
strangers and members of other ethnic groups,
but in reality visitors were rarely invited.

The purpose of the hunting festivals was to
honor the souls of the animals killed during the
previous season and to insure their regeneration
so that the number of animals on earth remained
plentiful and constant. In Koryak and Itelmen
ritual, regeneration of individual animals was
given more emphasis than among the Chukchi
and the Eskimo, for whom game was sent to
man by a master: Keretkun for the Chukchi, or
Samna or her male equivalent, Kasak, for the
Eskimo. In both cases the animals were treated
as guests visiting the humans, and certain rules
had to be observed. Among them were "treating
the guests" and "seeing off the guests." The
latter was accomplished by returning parts of
the game, usually bones or pieces of meat, to
the elements. Continuance of the relationship
between animals and human society was assured
by saving a portion of the body of the animal or
by ritual eating of its meat by the whole com¬
munity.

Most scholars consider the fall-winter festivals
as the beginning of the yearly cycle. Krashen-
innikov (1755:84) noted, "At the end of summer
and fall activities, no work could be started
before the festival, and people were not visiting
friends." For Bogoras, the first celebration of
the annual cycle was the "sacrifice to the sea,"
which was, like the "sacrifice to the dead,"
organized at the end of the summer, before the
move to the winter settlement. This was more
a ritual than a festival. In its simplest form, it
consisted of the hunter's displaying his harpoon
and other weapons to the Master of the Sea,
asking for good luck, while the hunter's wife
brought an offering of reindeer meat and blood,
or a dog might be sacrificed. The first community
festival after the busy summer and fall season
was the Itelmen purification festival at the end
of the fall. The Chukchi equivalent was a harvest
ceremony, taking place several times a year,
after a good hunt. A regular observance was
held every year in late fall or early winter. The
function of both Itelmen and Chukchi festivals
was to mark the boundary between years. There
are few descriptions of these ceremonies. It is
known that the Koryak burned stuffed seals or
seal effigies made of alder twigs at the fall
festival so that the seals would return.

The "putting away of the umiaks," corre¬
sponding in time with the refurbishment of
winter dwellings, was also an end-of-season
Koryak festival. After the skin boat cover was
removed from the umiak frame, a fire was lit

253

nearby with the fireboard and drill. Then the
ashes from the summer hearth were carried to
the communal shrine, where a new hearth was
lit from the live fire. The summer side entrance
to the semisubterranean house was closed, and
the ladder was installed in the roof entrance of
the house. The representations of the spirit at
the upper and lower ends of the ladder were
''fed'' with fat and offered incantations. The
ceremony concluded with symbolic launching of
the frame of the umiak, carrying the fireboard
(’’the father”) wrapped in fur clothing to which
a model harpoon was attached.

The main Chukchi festival at the end of the
fall was the Keretkun festival. The corresponding
Eskimo celebration was Kasak (or Saiak). Ker¬
etkun, Master of the Sea, was, as we have noted,
a tall anthropomorphic character with a black
face and a bad temper. He lived at the bottom
of the sea with his wife. The equivalent Eskimo
figure, Kasak, is not so well defined. Both Chukchi
and Eskimo believed the Master of the Sea
attended the ceremony and then went back to
the sea. The Maritime Chukchi probably bor¬
rowed the idea of this deity from the Eskimo.
The Chukchi actually were closer to the Aleut
in their use of Keretkun masks for pantomimic
dances, whereas masks in general were used
by Koryak, Eskimo, and Chukchi in winter cer¬
emonies only. The anthropomorphic masks were
made of skin among the Eskimo and the Chukchi
and of wood and grass among the Koryak (figs.
346, 424). By 1900, the different masks seem
to have lost whatever identity they may once
have had.

The Keretkun festival was a family celebration
to which guests were invited. It took place inside
the house. The important element of the setting
for the Eskimo was the central pole of the
iaranga. For the Chukchi a special pole was
passed through the top of the smoke hole, from
which the power of the ceremony was derived
and to which the sinew Keretkun net was at¬
tached, its edges being fastened to the walls.
Painted models of birds and paddles were hung
from the net. For the Eskimo, the ceremony
began by pouring sea water down the pole,
thereby bringing the Master of the Sea into the
house with the water. Later, a dance was staged
in which Kasak was impersonated with the aid
of a mask that had been empowered from contact
with the pole. The model paddles, and actual
paddles and umiak seats painted with hunting
scenes, were also used for magical purposes.
The spirit of the umiak was thought to live in
these objects, which were offered for food. All
such objects had to be tied by sinew lines to the
pole or otherwise were placed in the center of
the iaranga. In some settlements the painted

boards and paddles were burned at the end of
the festival, and in others they were kept for
the next year, in which case the drawings were
erased and were repainted. The representation
of Keretkun was burned, and the remains of
sacrificial food were thrown into the sea.

Many elements of the Keretkun-Kasak festival
are found in the whale festival that also occurred
in October or November. In this festival, draw¬
ings, masks, and figurines were used. Chukchi
and Eskimo painted whale tails at the corners of
their mouths or whole whales, vertically, on
their mouths and noses. The Chukchi and Eskimo
hunters, led by the umialik who had harpooned
the whale, danced around the body of the whale
on the shore. The women offered a drink of
fresh water to the whale, considered to be
visiting as a guest, and, among the Koryak, fed
it alder twigs. Then the women cut pieces from
the nose, lips, eyes, flippers, and flukes of the
whale. Before flensing, a hood of grass was put
on the whale's head as a funeral ritual. This was
equivalent to the Alaskan Eskimo ritual of slitting
a seal's eyes before the butchering so that his
soul would not see the bloody procedure. The
festival itself started shortly after the whale was
flensed. During the feast the whale was fed
again, and pantomimic dances were executed.
The women danced first, in the same number
as the hunters of the umiak, and then the hunters
danced with them. Eventually all the participants
danced, sometimes in masks.

Besides the feast, other entertainment at the
whale festival included contests of wrestling,
jumping, and running. Gifts were invariably
exchanged. Since the presents had no material
value, they were merely a way to reaffirm
community bonds. In most cases these gifts

345. Whale Festival Altar Objects
Koryak: AMNH 70-3246,-2992,-2856
For Koryak people the Whale Festival
was an important ceremonial event.
Similar to the Chukchi Keretkun and
the Bering Sea Eskimo Bladder Festi¬
val, the Whale Festival was to honor
the spirits of whales caught and in¬
sure their return to the sea so that
the species would be renewed.

During the festival a carving of a
whale and a ritual whale-shaped dish
containing an offering of a drink of
fresh water for the whale spirits was
placed on the household shrine along
with other guardians normally main¬
tained there. This shrine consisted of
a grass mat upon which were placed
the anthropomorphic family guardi¬
ans (dressed in grass "neckties"), the
sacred fireboard (fig. 243), the Mas¬
ter of Nets (fig. 182), and the house
guardian.

254

346. Masked Koryak Women
AMNH neg. 1428, Jesup Exp.
Jochelson took a unique series of
photographs during various stages of
a whale festival that he witnessed
among the Maritime Koryak. This
photograph shows women dressed in
grass masks, worn during the crucial
stage in the festival when an entreaty
was made for the return of the
whale's soul to the sea. A similar
type of grass mask was placed over
the head of the whale when it was
being butchered, so that it would not
see the bloody procedure.

Among northeastern Siberian
groups masking was relatively un¬
common at the time of the Jesup Ex¬
pedition and was present primarily
among the Koryak, who, in addition
to using grass masks, wore simple
wood masks in the Seal Festival, and
on other occasions.

were exchanged indirectly. In the Koryak seal
festival in the fall, for example, the guests arrived
at the festival house disguised in masks. The
hosts tried to pull off the masks. If they suc¬
ceeded. they offered their guests tea and food.
If not, the masked guests were not served but
silently showed the hosts a model of the gift
they wished to receive, and only after receiving
it did they take off their masks. The hosts could
ask for gifts too. In these exchanges, refusal was
not an option. Among the Chukchi the children
served as mediators and were sent by the
parents to ask for a present or to make a return
one. Sometimes the exchange was performed
without the givers' and receivers' seeing each
other, by passing presents under the polog
curtain.

Among the peoples of Chukotka and Kam¬
chatka, ritual games were conducted with the
whale spirit as part of the whale ceremony. The
Chukchi whale ceremony ended with a panto¬
mime of a hunt (cf. fig. 343). Inside the polog a
wooden whale figure was suspended by four
thongs, to each of which was attached a wooden
model of an umiak with hunters. After ritual
pantomimic dances, someone blew a cloud of

white powder or graphite from the spout of the
hollowed-out whale effigy, at which point it was
suddenly lowered, causing the umiaks to slide
down the thongs and strike it in imitation of a
successful whaling hunt. In their private cere¬
monies the Eskimo also hung a whale figurine
at the ceremonial pole or at the crossing of the
iaranga poles and occasionally fed it with fat.
To protect against disease, members of the
household swung or threw the effigy to each
other. The Koryak placed the actual head of a
whale, dressed in its hood of grass, on a cross¬
beam of the dwelling. At the end of the ceremony
two women in grass masks sang incantations to
the whale's spirit. Then the men carried the
head together with two seals into the forest.
The return of the guest was guaranteed by
offering part of the whale to the elements, as in
a person's funeral. Krasheninnikov remarked on
an Itelmen ceremony performed with a whale
figurine made of grass and fish meal ( iukola ). A
woman with a whale representation on her back
crawled into the house and two people hit the
whale with entrails while making calls like rav¬
ens. The ritual was completed when the whale
effigy was torn into pieces and eaten, a wide¬
spread type of eucharistic ritual.

The spring umiak festival was also important
in the annual cycle. It took place when the sea
was free of ice. Members of the umiak team,
led by the umialik, made a sacrifice to the Master
of the Sea and then took the umiak frame down
from its whalebone platform and recited incan¬
tations over it. The next day, the umiak was
carried to the shore and put on a wooden
platform, and sacrifices to the sea or to the
Master of the Sea were made. The Koryak
recalled that in former times a dog was sacrificed
and the fire and the umiak were fed.

Another festival, the head festival, took place
in early summer. Heads of walrus and bearded
seals were taken from the caches and were set
in a circle where they were fed by the elders.
Then the umiak team tied a line to the largest
walrus head and dragged it across the ground,
as they did after a successful walrus hunt. There
followed a feast of head meat, after which the
remains were burned.

In recent decades these festivals have died
out or become attenuated. When observed, they
have usually been reduced to minimal form,
including, sometimes, dances.

255

Eye of the Dance:

Spiritual Life of the Bering Sea Eskimo

Ann Fienup-Riordan

Much of what has been written concerning arctic
peoples emphasizes their ability to survive in a
frigid and inhospitable environment. Relatively
little has been said about the values that make
such survival culturally meaningful (but see
Briggs 1970). On the contrary, a close look at
the value systems of the peoples of the Far
North reveals less environmental determinism
than cultural imagination. The following is an
attempt to represent the system of symbols and
meanings that continue to guide the daily lives
and ritual activities of the contemporary Yupik
people of western Alaska. The representations
in this essay are derived in part from late- 19th-
and early-20th-century reporters (e.g., Nelson
1899; Lantis 1947) but mostly from the author's
own field observations from the present day,
along with recent work on ceremonialism by
Morrow (1984) and Mather (1985).

The loss of spiritual traditions in Siberia and
some regions of Alaska by the time their cultures
came to be recorded makes understanding of
the rich, continuing culture and language of the
Central Yupik peoples all the more important as
a model for visualizing traditional belief systems
and ideologies that were once more widely
distributed in the North Pacific-Bering Sea re¬
gion.

The Relationship Between Humans and
Animals

Unlike the coastal Eskimo to the north, the Yupik
Eskimo relied on neither the bowhead whale nor

the walrus for their sustenance. Although the
shallow coastline precludes the presence of either
of these larger sea mammals, the coastal waters
of the Bering Sea abound with a variety of seals
as well as beluga whales, occasional walrus, and
sea lions. The daily lives of the men and women
of the Bering Sea coast were centered on the
conquest of these sea mammals, as well as of
an impressive variety of fish, land mammals,
and waterfowl. In their dealings with these
animals, the Yupik Eskimo did not view them¬
selves as dominant over dumb, mute beasts that
served them. Neither did they see themselves
as dependent on or subordinate to the animals.
On the contrary, they viewed the relationship
between men and animals as collaborative re¬
ciprocity by which the animals gave themselves
to the hunter in response to the hunter's re¬
spectful treatment of them as nonhuman per¬
sons.

According to the worldview of the Yupik
Eskimo, human and nonhuman persons shared
a number of characteristics. First and foremost,
the perishable flesh of both humans and animals
belied the immortality of their souls ("yuas").
All living things participated in an endless cycle
of birth and rebirth of which the souls of animals
and men were a part, contingent on right thought
and action by others as well as self. For both
men and animals, the soul was identified as the
principle that sustained life. For sea mammals,
the soul had an anatomical locus (the bladder).
For human and nonhuman persons, the soul

347. Black Bear Inua Mask
Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 48986
Alaskan native peoples, like Siberi¬
ans, believed that animals and ob¬
jects possessed souls that could
change into human and other forms.
This concept is seen most clearly in
inua masks made by Bering Sea Eski¬
mos. This mask represents a black
bear with its semihuman inua ap¬
pearing in its right eye, partly ob¬
scured by human hair. Hunters often
told of seeing inuas in the fur, feath¬
ers, or eyes of animals they were
hunting. An encircling red-painted
groove gave the mask spiritual life.
One of a pair of two similar masks,
perhaps used in a paired dance per¬
formance, this mask has lost its origi¬
nal white paint, its tongue, and its
arcing array of white feathers.

256

348. Grizzly Bear Spirit Realm
Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 38734
This mask represents the masked
face (note mask bars on eyes) of a
grizzly bear spirit confronting his tra¬
ditional food, a salmon. His whiskers
are made of quills, and three old-
squaw feathers are set into his brow.
In addition to an encircling painted
ring, bentwood hoops called ellan-
guat (lit. pretend cosmos or universe)
fitted with swan feathers surround
his head. Similarly decorated hoops
used in the Doll Festival were repre¬
sented to Edward Nelson (1899:496)
as being symbolic of the universe,
with feathers and downy plumes
being stars and snowflakes.

remained in the vicinity of the body for a
specified time after death before going to an
extraterrestrial realm to await rebirth. For hu¬
mans, an essential aspect of the person was
reborn in the next generation. The newborn
child regularly received both the name and with
it the soul of a recently deceased relative in the
ascending generation. Finally, inanimate objects
were also believed to possess souls. Thus hunt¬
ing implements were decorated not only to
please or attract animals but also to impart life
into and please the objects themselves.

Side by side with this belief in an essential
spiritual continuity bridging the gap between
the past and the future, the Yupik people allowed
that men and animals alike possessed aware¬
ness. According to Joe Friday of Chevak:

We felt that all things were like us people, to the
small animals like the mouse and the things like wood
we liken to people as having a sense of awareness.
The wood it is glad to the person who is using it and
the person using it is grateful to the wood for being
there to be used (Friday 1985).

As they gradually grew to maturity and gained
awareness, both humans and animals were the
recipients of a multitude of prescriptions ("ai-
erquutet ") and proscriptions (" inerquutet ") for
the culturally appropriate living of life. Three
related ideas, however, may be seen to underlie
this elaborate detail: the power of a person's
thought, the importance of thoughtful action in
order not to injure another's mind, and, con¬
versely, the danger inherent in "following one's
own mind'' (Fienup-Riordan 1987:8ff).

As to the first point, the power of a person's
thought, the clear message was that a person's
attitude was as significant as his action. Thus
young men were admonished to "keep the
thought of the seals'' foremost in their minds as
they performed daily duties. In all these acts,
by the power of their mind they were said to
be "making a way for the seals'' whom they
would someday hunt. In the same way, a preg¬
nant woman must keep the thought of her unborn
child first in her mind to assure its well-being.

257

Animals were also subject to this stricture.
For example, oral tradition describes how young
seals were admonished by their elders to "stay
awake” to the rules, both literally and figura¬
tively, so that their immortal souls might survive
the hunter's blow. If they were asleep when
they were hit they would "die dead, forever”
(Fienup-Riordan 1983:179).

In all tasks undertaken, the appropriate atti¬
tude was considered as important as the action.
Conversely, for humans and animals the "power
of the mind of the elders” to affect their future
was cited as reason both to give help to an
individual elder and to avoid their displeasure.
One contemporary account admonished that
young people be careful to perform these char¬
itable tasks at night, so that no person would
see them:

Only at night he clears the path.

If he does it during the day,
letting the people see him,
already then,

through the people he has his reward.

But if he does that with no one watching him
and nobody is aware of him,
only the one watching him,
the ocean or the land, . . .

the ellam yua [person or spirit of the universe] will
give him his reward.

Second, as proper thought could effect success
in the domain of human and animal interaction,
so careful thought must reign over thoughtless
action in order not to injure the mind of the
other person. Ideally, smoothness and agree¬
ableness should mask a person's emotions. This
rule was as important in animal-human as in
intrahuman interaction. For example, it was out
of consideration or respect for the animal's mind
that the hunter was admonished never to brag
about either his projected accomplishments or
past success. This same consideration also mo¬
tivated his verbal apology when dispatching his
prey.

Last of all, a number of traditional tales re¬
called the consequences of a person's following
his own mind as opposed to following the advice
of his elders. The results were usually disastrous,
with retribution often experienced by the wrong¬
doer as well as his companions. In the oral
tradition, some animals are identified as de¬
scended from human beings who were trans¬
formed as a consequence of willfully disregard¬
ing the rules.

In the end, human and nonhuman persons
can be seen to share two fundamental charac¬
teristics: an immortal soul and mind or aware¬
ness. This essential similarity in turn creates the
common ground on which their interaction is
played out. Just as human hunters are capable
of conscious decisions as to what and where to

hunt, animals are likewise capable of conscious
decisions that affect the success of individual
hunters (e.g., the decision of a seal not to
approach a hunter who appears to him as care¬
less in either thought or action (Fienup-Riordan
1983:180).

As a result of the qualities of personhood
shared alike by humans and animals, the basis
for a mutual and necessary respect is estab¬
lished. One such instance of respectful action is
the care given to animal bones. For example,
great effort was made to remove every scrap of
meat from seal bones. If this was not done, the
seals would perceive the bones as loudly singing,
warning them not to give themselves to those
careless people. Traditionally bones were either
buried, burned, or submerged. It was felt to be
essential that bones not be left to lie around for
fear they would be stepped on by men or chewed
on by dogs. Moreover, the bones of food given
away must be returned to the donor. The respect
shown to animal bones was motivated by the
desire that the animals be able to "cover their
bones” in the future, that is, to return as edible
game.

Although human-nonhuman interaction is made
possible by the common possession of an im¬
mortal soul and a mind meriting respect, men
and animals are also clearly differentiated. Within
the oral tradition, these differences are least
evident in the traditional tales of time out of
mind. Moreover, the reality of the mythical

349. Fish Club

North Alaskan Eskimo: NMNH 64218
This club (cf. fig. 184) takes the form
of a fish predator, the seal Its ivory
eyes are inlaid with dark wood plugs,
and its whiskers and lashes are
shown by finely incised lines and
remnant stubs of fur. The scratch be¬
tween the eyes indicates it is a
masked spirit.

350. Walrus-Man

North Alaskan Eskimo: NMNH 89827
This powerful figure, made from a
board, has (restored) tusks and ivory
eyes, and wears a gutskin parka. A
sinew line, probably for suspension,
passes through a hole in the stomach.

Its identity and function are not
known, but the pose suggests Kika-
migo, the giant figure seen on Bar-
row gorgets standing amidst hunters
and sea mammals with his arms
upraised (fig. 444; Murdoch
1892:371, 394; Ray 1977:87). As a
walrus-man in gutskin clothing it also
resembles Keretkun, the Chukchi
Master of the Sea, who had a special
connection with walrus, lived at the
bottom of the sea, wore gutskin
clothes, and was represented in the
Keretkun ceremony in the form of a
figurine (Bogoras 1904-1909:316,

392; Serov, p. 254; see also Ray
1981: fig. 37).

258

351. Transformation Mask
Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 393152
A blood-stained tunghak is seen in
the face of this bird mask, which
combines stylistic features of Eskimo
and Indian art. Inua and tunghak
masks are common in Bering Sea Es¬
kimo culture, but the use of fur,
painted hair, and cylindrical ear orna¬
ments are typical of Ingalik Indian
masks. The mask was collected in
Norton Sound, but seems likely to
have originated among Eskimo-like
Ingalik Indians who lived upstream
on the Yukon River.

352. Seal Inua Ornaments
Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 37763,
43727 (pair)

Preoccupation with seals, a dominant
feature of Yupik Eskimo economic
and religious life in southwestern
Alaska, is seen in these earrings and
in a beltbuckle showing a seal inua
bounded by flipper designs.

space-time they describe is still believed to be
present, although largely invisible. In these tales,
animals are often encountered who lift up their
beaks or muzzles, transforming themselves into
human form (e.g.. Nelson 1899:394, 453). In the
tale of Ayugutaar, a Nelson Island hunter who
was visited by a wolf, the hunter's initial en¬
counter with the wolf is described as follows:

After doing something around its head
and doing something to its mouth
when it faced him,
it became this way
taking its hood off.

In the same way, gaining awareness (” ellange -")
is sometimes equated with peeling back the skin
of an animal, as when the puppies born to a
Nelson Island woman who had married a dog
peeled back their fur and revealed themselves
to their mother in human form. Nineteenth-
century transformation masks are a vivid por¬
trayal of this perception of reality (fig. 435;
Fitzhugh and Kaplan 1982:215).

Along with the depiction of animal-human
transformations, the oral tradition also recalls
the subsequent process of differentiation by
which the physical and behavioral contrasts
between humans and animals occurred. For
example, the origin of the wolverine with its
vicious personality is attributed to the frustration
and subsequent transformation of a man follow¬
ing his desertion by his spirit wife (Tennant and
Bitar 1981:263). In these tales, contemporary
animal species are identified as descended from
transformed human beings.

Perhaps the most vivid accounts of animal-
human interaction, and those that best portray
both the similarities and the differences between
animal and human society, are tales that describe
humans visiting animal society and animals liv¬
ing within human society. An example of the
first is the story of the boy who went to live
with the seals (Fienup-Riordan 1983:177ff). On
arriving in the seals' underwater home, the boy
perceives his hosts as humans of differing sizes
and shapes, depending on their species identity.
Conversely, animals can enter human society,
as in the case of the wolf who takes human form
and comes to dwell with the hunter Ayugutaar.
However, the animal nature of the former is
always apparent, as in Ayugutaar' s guest's pro¬
pensity to crunch bones when he eats.

Although these tales depict animals as humans
and describe their social interaction, they also
serve to underline the differences between them.
For example, in the story of the boy who went
to live with the seals, emphasis is placed on
contrasting perceptions by describing the seals'
experience with humans from the seals' point
of view. From the seals' perspective, humans

who failed to live by the rules would appear
distorted in one way or another:

People would be walking

and one of the men on shore

would be seen as

having a necklace of many things

such as old mukluks.

Some men were encumbered as such.

It is said that

those are the ones

who continually walk

under everything that is hanging.

In the same way, after drinking from a bowl or
dipper, a person was required to make a stylized
removal motion, in which the right hand was
passed back and forth across his face to clear
his vision. If a man failed to perform this removal
motion, he would not be able to see game even
though it was well within his view. At the same
time, the animals would see him as having the
bowl stuck in the front of his face. Thus, the oral
tradition represents the perceptible differences
between humans and animals as overt and
perhaps illusory appearances that mask under¬
lying resemblances between them. This hidden
world in which animals look like humans, speak
Yupik, wear clothes, and eat akutaq (a mixture
of berries, fat, seal oil, boned fish, sugar, and
other ingredients, sometimes called Eskimo ice
cream) figures in the stories as more real than

259

the conventional human experience of animals
as speechless and differently formed.

In the end, the view persists that animals
were once closer to humans, used human cloth¬
ing and speech, but were gradually differen¬
tiated from their human counterparts. Their
possession of mind as well as their rebirth after
being killed and eaten by humans are described
as essential aspects of their personhood, real
yet unavailable to conventional observation. The

The Relationship Between Men and Women

Just as differences exist between humans and
animals, there are also differences between men
and women. This distinction traditionally framed,
and continues to frame today, activities in every¬
day life. At the same time, the domains of
hunting and procreation are ultimately joined
and together are viewed as essential to assuring
the reproduction of life.

To begin with, a well-documented sexual
division of labor traditionally circumscribed daily
activity in western Alaska. Men hunted while
their mothers, wives, and daughters processed
their catch. Men were largely, although not
wholly, responsible for the provision of raw
materials, while women worked in the house to
produce food and clothing. The moment the
hunter reached home, he lost jurisdiction over
his catch. Along with processing the kill, women
were also largely responsible for its distribution.

Into the 1940s, this division of tasks was
replicated in a significant residential division.
Men lived together communally in a large central
dwelling ( qasgiq ) in which they worked, ate,
slept, instructed male children, entertained vis¬
itors, took sweat baths, and held elaborate cel¬
ebrations. Women and children, on the other
hand, lived and worked in smaller sod houses
( enet ).

The residential division of the sexes that
characterized village life had important ritual as
well as social significance. In a variety of con¬
texts, the women's house was comparable to a
womb in which biological, social, and spiritual
production were accomplished. It was in this
house that women worked to transform the raw
materials supplied by their men into food and
clothing for the people. When a woman was
pregnant, her activity within and exit from the
house were likened to that of the fetus within
her own body. For instance, upon waking each
morning a pregnant woman must quickly rise
and exit from the house, before she does any¬
thing else, so that her child's exit from the womb
will be a speedy one (Fienup-Riordan 1983:184,
218).

ritual treatment given animals by Yupik people
in western Alaska today presupposes these same
shared aspects of personhood. To this day,
animals are believed by some people to observe
what is done to their carcasses, communicate
with others of their kind, and experience rebirth
after death. These aspects of the animal as a
nonhuman person underlie and set the stage for
everyday experience.

Furthermore, both the women's house and
her womb were, under certain circumstances,
equated with the moon, the home of tunghaks,
the spirit keepers of the land animals. Spring
itself was marked by the cutting of a door in the
side of the women's sod house to permit ready
egress. A similar opening in the moon was
necessary to release the land animals for the
new harvest season. As part of their effort to
insure success in the coming year, shamans
would journey to the moon (also sometimes a
euphemism for sexual intercourse), where they
were said to use their power to induce land
animals to visit the earth.

Not only was the women's house viewed in
certain contexts as a symbolic womb, productive
of animals as well as men. Women's activity and
inactivity were also directly tied to a man's
ability to succeed in the hunt. First and foremost,
contact with women was carefully circumscribed
so that a man could retain his power to pursue
game. Traditionally, men and women had dis¬
tinctive eating utensils reserved for their exclu-

353. Lunar Tunghak
Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 38645
Bering Sea Eskimos believed the su¬
preme diety that controlled animals,
the tunghak, lived in the moon. It
was to him they sent their shamans
to plead for game and other favors.
In addition to their ferocious, blood¬
stained mein, tunghak masks reflect
lunar themes. This mask displays
toothed orbs and crescents, and por¬
trays the twisted-face "old man in
the moon." The right eye originally
was masked by drooping hair, and
feathers were mounted around the
rim.

260

354. Conventionalized Animal Face
Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 33060
Two nucleated circles are the basis
for this simple rendition of an ani¬
mal's face, showing eyes, nose, whis¬
kers, and markings. Nucleated circles
(also known as the circle and dot)
have been used for thousands of
years in Eskimo art. In the Central
Yupik language, they are called ellam
iinga, meaning "eye of awareness."
These and other symbols were used
by Bering Sea Eskimo to support
their complex transformational view
of the spirit-world.

Many different kinds of illustra¬
tions were used on the inside of
bentwood food bowls, including ani¬
mals, legendary beings, and hunting
scenes. No doubt, people learned
(and told) stories from these designs
while eating. Bowls with bentwood
rims were used by women; un¬
rimmed bowls by men. Although col¬
lected from an Eskimo village this
bowl was attributed to Ingalik Indian
manufacture (Fitzhugh and Kaplan
1982:238).

sive use. Women's bentwood bowls were made
with a rim, and men's bowls were blunt-edged.
In bed with his own wife, a man was warned
never to sleep facing her, lest the braid of her
hair appear hanging in front of his face and
subseguently block his vision.

Women's air was also considered polluting to
young hunters and dulled their senses. Accord¬
ing to Paul John of Toksook Bay, a man's breath
soul ( anerneq ) was particularly vulnerable to
contamination from such contacts. That such
proscriptions affected a man's ability to hunt is
attested to in a description of a shaman's visit
to the underwater home of the seals occurring
during the celebration of the Bladder Festival at
the coastal village of Chevak. When peeking in
the skylight, the shaman overheard the conver¬
sation of the “bladder people”;

Some of them will say they had a good host and will
go back to the same host. Some of them will say they
had a bad host because the host always made him
smell female odor and would say he is not going back
to his former host (Friday 1984).

At the same time that female odor repelled
animals, the smell of the land was believed to
attract them. For this reason, hunters fumigated
themselves with the smoke of wild celery, La¬
brador tea, and blackberry bushes, among other
things, to prepare for the hunt.

355. Ornamented Sewing Gear
(Top to bottom) Bering Sea Eskimo:
NMNH 176142, 43661, 16140,
43535; Aleut: 316777
These women's sewing implements
include a thread spool, a bootcreaser
(to crimp and gather the soles), a
seal-shaped fastener for a woman's
"housewife," or workbag, an awl,
and a birdbone needle blank. In ivory
graphic arts, an Eskimo specialty, nu¬
cleated circles served variously as
eyes, as jointmarks, and simply as
decorative elements.

At the same time that a hunter had to protect
himself from the depleting effects of unclean
air, socially restricted sight was necessary to
procure powerful supernatural vision. Likewise,
young women were admonished from direct eye
contact with hunters.

In all social as well as ritual situations direct
eye contact was, and continues to be, considered
rude for young people, male or female, whereas
downcast eyes signify humility and respect.
Sight is the prerogative of age, of knowledge,
and of power. For example, the powerful man
in the moon has a bright face, and people fear
to look at him and must look downwards. The
powerful shades of the dead were traditionally
said to hear and see nothing at first. However,
by the time they reached the grave, they had
attained clairvoyance (Nelson 1899:425). Finally,
powerful images and hunting fetishes were sup¬
posed to watch for game and, by clairvoyant
powers, sight it at a great distance (Nelson
1899:436).

A material manifestation of vision imagery is
seen in the nucleated circle that appears as
decoration on many hunting charms as well as
objects of everyday use (figs. 181, 195, 355,
357). The circle-dot motif, so common in Eskimo
iconography, is specifically designated ellam
iinga (literally, “the eye of awareness”) in the
Central Yupik language. The nucleated circle
has, in the literature, been designated as a joint
mark and, as such, part of a skeletal motif.
Alternately, it has been labeled a stylized wom¬
an's breast that might then be substituted for a
woman's face (Ray 1981:25; Himmelheber
1953:62). The sexual and skeletal motifs may
well have been part of its significance. However,
it was not merely that the nucleated circle
marked joints but rather that joints were marked
with circular eyes (Fienup-Riordan 1986, 1987a).
Here William Thalbitzer's (1908:447ff) obser¬
vation on the Greenlandic Eskimo is particularly
significant: "According to Eskimo notions, in
every part of the human body (particularly in
every joint, as for instance, in every finger joint)
there resides a little soul.”

Throughout the Arctic, joint marking was
associated with social transformation in various
contexts. For example, in western Alaska the
wrists of young men and women were tattooed
with dots on the occasion of their first kill or
first menstruation, respectively. Ritual scarifi¬
cation has also been observed among the Sibe¬
rian Yupik Eskimo (Bogoras 1904:408), and Wal-
demar Bogoras records that among the Maritime
Chukchi of Northeast Siberia tattooed joint marks
once served as a tally of homicides. When these
tattooing customs are considered in the context
of the custom of applying eye-shaped markings

261

to the joints, it strongly suggests that the tat¬
tooed joint mark is itself the rudiment of the eye
motif (Schuster 1951:18).

As in the circle-dot motif as applied to material
objects, the puberty tattoo denoted enhanced
vision. In fact in the oral tradition, one mark of
a transformed character is the appearance of
black circles around the eyes. Dark circles also
appear as goggles on Bering Sea Eskimo 19th-
century objects (figs. 45, 358, 362, 435, 437.
438). These goggles identify beings as super¬
natural, are puns for masking, and refer to their
state of transformation. One contemporary Cen¬
tral Yupik hunter recalled his mother circling his
eyes with soot when, at age nine, he returned
to the village after killing his first bearded seal
(Fienup-Riordan 1987a:43).

Not only were joints marked with eyes as a
sign of social transformation. Actually cutting
an animal or human on the joints was also
associated with spiritual transformation, as when
the joints of dangerous animals were cut to
prevent the animal's spirit from reanimating its
body. In the same way, the shaman might be
ritually dismembered prior to his journey to the
spirit world. Traveling out through the smoke
hole or down through a hole in the ice, he would
visit the yuas (souls) of the fish and game to
entreat them to return the coming year. The
nucleated circle, both an eye and a hole, thus

recalls the ability to pass from one world to
another, as well as the ability to see into another
world.

An example of the relationship between so¬
cially restricted sight and powerful supernatural
vision is contained in the traditional tale of the
boy who lived and traveled with the seals for
one year to gain extraordinary hunting knowl¬
edge and power:

And his host [the bearded seal] said to him,

"Watch him [the good hunter], watch his eyes, see
what good vision he has.

When his eyes see us, see how strong his vision is.
When he sights us, our whole being will quake,
and this is from his powerful gaze.

When you go back to your village, the women,
some will see them, not looking sideways, but looking
directly at their eyes.

The ones who live like that, looking like that,

looking at the eye of women,

their vision will become less strong.

When you look at women your vision will lose its
power.

Your sight gets weakened.

But the ones that don't look at people, at the center
of the face,

the ones who use their sight sparingly,
as when you have little food, and use it little by little.
So, too, your vision, you must be stingy with your
vision,

using it little by little, conserving it always.

These, then, when they start to go hunting,
and use their eyes only for looking at their quarry,
their eyes truly then are strong.

In the above the finite nature of human sight
is especially significant. A hunter's vision, like
his thought and breath, must not be squandered.
Significantly, a man's ability to harvest animals
as an infinitely renewable resource was contin¬
gent on his careful use of his own finite personal
human resources. Moreover, a hunter's ability
to succeed in the hunt was not only tied to his
care of the animals but also to his relationship
with women.

Not only did a woman's actions impact the
power of the hunter to attract and overcome
game but also, in specific contexts, a woman's
actions were believed to affect directly the
actions of the fish and game the hunter sought.
For instance, when her husband went in search
of certain land animals at fall camp, a woman
was required to remain at rest within the house,
sometimes called her "den,” neither working
nor coming outside. In some instances, she was
equated with the hunter's prey, her inactivity
directly related to the inactivity (and subsequent

356. Child's Doll

Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 129236
This doll is typical of those owned by
every young Bering Sea Eskimo girl.
The dolls were armless so their cloth¬
ing could be removed easily for sea¬
sonal changes of fashion. Girls were
not allowed to play with dolls inside
the house or during winter. They had
to await the coming of spring, sig¬
naled by the arrival of geese. If they
cheated, the geese would fly past
without stopping and winter would
pass without summer directly into
winter.

357. Story knife

Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 127403
For a Yupik Eskimo girl, an ivory
storyknife was her most treasured
plaything besides her dolls. Made by
her uncle, the storyknife was used to
draw pictures and shorthand symbols
in the sand, illustrating stories she
made up or heard. This storyknife,
like most, has an image of a bird —
probably a puffin — on the hilt, in ad¬
dition to a collar motif, three nu¬
cleated circles, and a skeletized
spine. No certain information exists
on the symbolism of storyknife deco¬
ration, but it appears to represent
stylized birds.

262

358. Reality, Masked

Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 37745,

43670

Concepts of transformation and
masking, so pervasive in Bering Sea
Eskimo belief, were illustrated on
women's jewelery . A masked
semihuman tunghak decorates this
hair ornament, and a seal-person
transformation appears on an earring.
Belief in the mutability of the physi¬
cal and the spiritual, of multiple
worlds and realities in constant trans¬
formation, was the basis for highly
creative Bering Sea Eskimo art.

359. Ivory Kayak Ornaments

Bering Sea Eskimo (clockwise from
top): NMNH 43509, 176145, 44709,
37063, 43538

The large float plugs are decorated
with a human face with beaded eyes
and labrets and a short-eared owl
with red mineral eyes. The line fas¬
teners (.lower right) illustrate gender
iconography: smiles (comer labrets)
are male; frowns (center labrets) are
female. Spearguards are decorated
with performated hands, a common
tunghak motif.

huntability) of the animals her husband sought
as described elsewhere with regard to the whal¬
ing ritual (p. 168). In other cases, the care with
which she worked was felt to impact directly
the willingness of animals to give themselves to
her husband. For instance, if a man's wife was
a sloppy seamstress, her irregular stitchery
would cause animals to run away. Finally, in the
case of sea mammals, a woman was felt to
attract or draw the animals by virtue of the fresh
water she gave their thirsty souls immediately
following their successful capture. While per¬
forming this action, the woman would talk to
the seal, saying, "See our water here is tasty,
very inviting.”

At different stages in her life, a woman af¬
fected men differently. For a young woman, the
most important event in her maturation was
celebrated following her first menstruation. At
this time, a girl was sequestered, her condition
comparable to that of the fetus in her social
invisibility, restriction of movement, and the
prohibition against both childhood and adult
activities:

Then in the spring time,

when they became aware that she had become a
woman,

they let her sit down.

They put a grass mat in front of her,
and then behind her they made a door.

They didn't let her go out through the regular door¬
way.

Only through the back door . . .

And those girls who had become women,
they let them wear old clothes,
and their mittens had no thumbs.

And when they went to the bathroom they put their
hood on

without looking around,

and their head bowed really low.

They go to the area where trash was taken.

They would urinate in the dumping place.

These are some of the things for those who had sat
down.

Here a number of elements evoke the power of
the menstruating woman to impact the harvest.
These include the image of the thumbless hand
(figs. 180, 436) simultaneously signifying the
idea of impaired grasp and its relation to game
productivity (Nelson 1899:395), as well as the
restricted sight and use of a hood described
above as prerequisite for male hunting power.

On the occasion of her "standing up” after
this period of isolation, the girl was required to
give away her childhood playthings, including
small dolls and their clothing, to other prepu-
bescent females (fig. 356). The restrictions sur¬
rounding the use of these dolls are particularly
meaningful. Young girls were forbidden from
using their dolls during the winter or inside the
house, their use being restricted to the outside
after the return of the geese. Their dormancy

in the interior of the house during the winter
and their emergence in the summer replicates
both the transformation of their owners through
puberty restrictions into women capable of giv¬
ing birth and the birth process itself
(Fienup Riordan 1983:218). It was believed
that if a young girl was to play with a doll
outside the house before the arrival of spring,
the birds would pass by and winter would move
into winter with no intervening season. Here
again inappropriate female activity was directly
tied to cosmological upset and subsequent hu¬
man disaster.

Not surprisingly, one of the first women to
impact a hunter's relationship with animals was
his mother. While she carried the fetus, a wom¬
an's actions were not only believed to influence
the immediate well-being of her child but also
its future abilities as a hunter.

And it was an inerquun that never,

through the window,

was she to try to see what was going on.

She was only to check by going through the door.

When she's curious about something,
she is to go outside and find out about it.

And if she does that,
when her son grows up
and goes hunting,

when the animals hear him and become curious,
they would show themselves to him and be caught.

All those things that she is doing
to that baby of hers, if it's a boy,
towards the times when he will be trying to do things,
the things she does or doesn't do while pregnant
affect them.

His mother then.

like the one who makes his catch available,
like the one who makes his catch visible,
she will give to the one she is carrying.

A number of rules continue to tie the actions
of the mother and child (male or female) through¬
out its growing up. For instance, a woman was
traditionally admonished never to breast-feed
her child while lying down but rather to sit up
and unabashedly bare her breast for him to
make him tough and strong. Were she to be
lazy, her careless attitude and action would
directly undermine her child's future hunting
ability. As he grew, a mother constantly taught
her son the rules by which he would live.
Significantly, her advice focused on the distance
he must keep from women:

A child,
if it is a boy,

he is never to go near a female.

He is not to look at a female squarely in the face.
And on the lee side of a female he was to pass,
and never was he to be stepped over by a woman.

Then, finally, at the age of five or six he was
ready to leave her: "Leaving his mother, moving
out of his mother to those men, he joins them.”

263

The Window Between the Worlds: Houses,
Holes, Eyes, and Passages

When young boys came to live in the men's
house ( qasgiq ), they entered the social and
ceremonial center of the Yupik world. It was in
the men's house that they would receive tech¬
nical training as well as careful instruction in
the rules that they must follow to become
successful hunters. Under the tutelage of their
fathers and uncles, even very young boys were
expected to rise early and work diligently in the
performance of a number of manual tasks. It
was the boys' job to keep the communal water
bucket continually filled, as well as to keep the
entryway and skylight of the men's house cleared
of snow.

As in a woman's work, the performance of
these tasks had both practical and ritual impli¬
cations. For instance, the water bucket must be
kept full at all times to attract the seals, who
were always thirsty for fresh water. Likewise,
boys were required to keep the water hole
constantly free of ice and to take care to drink
from it only in a prone position to please "the
old woman of the hole,'' who would subsequently
send them good luck in hunting. Here the water
hole was explicitly designated the window of
the world below.

In stories such as "The Boy Who Went to Live
With the Seals,” the male seal spirits were
depicted as living in an underwater men's house

from within which they could view the attention
of would-be hunters by watching the condition
of the central smoke hole in their underwater
abode. If hunters were giving them proper
thought and care, the smoke hole would appear
clear. If not, the hole would be covered with
snow and nothing would be visible. When their
visibility was obstructed in this way the seals
would not emerge from their underwater world
or allow themselves to be hunted. It was this
vision that young men sought to maintain as
they carefully cleared ice from skylights and
water holes (Fienup-Riordan 1983:178).

The performance of a number of important
ceremonies in the men's house dramatically
reinforced the notion of the ice hole and smoke
hole alike as passageways between the human
and nonhuman worlds. For instance, one of the
most important traditional ceremonies was the
Bladder Festival, held annually to insure the
rebirth of the yuas, or spirits of the seals, which
were said to be located in their bladders. During
the closing performances of the Bladder Festival,
the shaman would climb out through the skylight
to enter the sea, visit the seal spirits, and request
their return. Likewise the inflated bladders were
removed through the qasgiq smoke hole at the
end of the festival and taken to the ice hole.
There they were deflated and sent back to their
underwater qasgiq with the request that they
return the following year (fig. 366).

In addition to serving as a passage permitting
movement and communication between the world
of the hunter and the hunted, the central qasgiq
smoke hole was also a passageway between the
world of the living and the dead. For example,
in the event of a human death, the body of the
deceased was pulled through the smoke hole,
after first being placed in each of its four corners.
By this action the deceased, on the way from
the world of the living to the dead, gradually
exchanged the mortal sight that it lost at death
for the supernatural clairvoyance of the spirit
world (Nelson 1899:425). Although both the
smoke hole and the ice hole were rectangular
rather than round, this does not undercut their
significance as spiritual eyes. One variant of the
circle-dot motif is, in fact, a rectangle with four
small projections, one at each corner, within
which was carved a dot surrounded by concen¬
tric circles (fig. 299). In fact, the numbers four
and five figure prominently in Central Yupik
ritual, representing among other things the num¬
ber of steps leading to the underworld land of
the dead. The Bladder Festival rituals use four
corners and four sets of hunting and boating
gear. At one stage in its performance, the

360. Floatboard and Paddles
Eskimo: MAE 11-167
Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 36057
Yupik cosmology is represented in
this unique but undocumented kayak
floatboard, whose cutouts can be read
either as lunar phases or a human
figure. In addition, animal regenera¬
tion may be indicated by the round
holes, since the souls of new animals
(particularly seals) are brought into
the world through the sky-hole, and
leave it by being sunk through the
ice hole at the end of the Bladder
Festival (fig. 366).

The paddles are decorated with a
female sexual emblem seen when the
blades are conjoined, and have tun-
ghak faces cut into their handles.

264

bladders were presented with tiny spears, min¬
iature pack baskets, and other tiny tools in sets
of four to enable them to capture the food that
they were given. Painted bentwood bowls and
incised ivory made for the occasion have spurs
that occur in units of four. The reference to
square or rectangular holes and the quadrangle
functioning like a circle and dot may form a
logical symbolic complex with this added sacred
dimension.

361. Beaded Ermine Skin Dance
Headdress

Koniag Eskimo: NMNH 90451
This headdress collected on the Alas¬
kan Peninsula in 1884 combines spir¬
itually powerful land and sea preda¬
tors — ermine and pelagic cormorant —
in a ceremonial headdress. Three er¬
mines with beads attached to their
jaws, nostrils, and ears project from
the brim over an elaborate beaded
brow panel. The ermine skins are
quilted into a base of cormorant
skins, and red wool and grey (hu¬
man?) hair tassels hang from the
sides of the headdress. Beaded pen¬
dants ''obstruct" the dancer's vision,
a necessary requirement for certain
dances. Obstructed vision is also a
characteristic of Siberian Shaman
hats (fig. 333).

362. Dance Fans

Bering Sea Eskimo: 38855a, b
Whereas men wore gloves, women
danced with delicately carved fans,
also called finger masks, in each
hand.

Not only did the motif of the ringed center
connote spiritual vision and movement between
worlds but the act of encircling was also per¬
formed in various contexts to produce enhanced
spiritual vision or as protection from spiritual
invasion. For example, during the Bladder Fes¬
tival, young men ran counter clockwise around
the village before entering the men's house
bearing bunches of wild celery needed to purify
the bladders and "let them see” the gifts of the
people. Likewise, when a man hunted sea mam¬
mals at certain times of the year, he had to
circle his kill in the direction of the sun's course
before retrieval. The boat itself was also ritually
circled before launching in the spring, both in
Alaska and in Siberia (Usugan 1984; Moore
1923:369; Bogoras 1904:404ff). Similarly, on
the third or fifth day after the birth of a child in
western Alaska, the new mother traditionally
emerged from her confinement, marking her
return to social visibility by circling the house,
again in the direction of the sun's course. Finally,

on the fifth day after a human death, the grave
was circled in the direction of the sun's circuit
by the bereaved to send away the spirit of the
deceased. All of these ritual acts recall the magic
circle reported by Knud Rasmussen (1927:129,
1931:60) from the Netsilik region, whereby peo¬
ple walked in a circle around strangers who
approached their camp so that their footprints
would contain any evil spirits that might have
accompanied the newcomers.

The performance of a marriage dance ( ingu -
lag) during the Bladder Festival on Nelson Island
continues the image of the ringed center with
the connotation of vision as well as movement
between worlds. This was a slow, stylized dance
by a young bride who appeared with lowered
eyes and bedecked in the furs and finery pro¬
duced for her by her newly acquired mate. This
dance often depicted a particularly successful
harvesting episode. The marriage dance per¬
formed on this occasion provided a strong image
of the complementarity between the production
of game and the reproduction of life. While
literally dancing the successful hunt, the bride
held her skirt below the waist and rhythmically
"fluffed it up to ward off old age and to let her
have children.” This expansive gesture by a
sexually mature woman was in sharp contrast
to the rule requiring young unmarried girls to
hold their skirts tightly down around their legs
when entering or exiting the qasgiq. If they
failed to do so, it was said that the old men
would grab at their vaginal areas "to teach them
respect.”

When a woman performed the marriage dance,
she appeared before the audience with stu¬
diously down-cast eyes. On this occasion, as in
other dance performances, her head was encir¬
cled with a beaded wolverine crown (cf. figs.
361, 365). The effect of this head ornament was
simultaneously to restrict her view as well as to
protect her from supernatural powers. It is
possible that the grass masks used by some
Kamchatkan peoples as well as similar grass
head coverings occasionally used in western

265

Alaska also functioned to restrict human sight
and protect the dancer from the effects of
powerful supernatural vision (fig. 346).

The grass and beaded headdresses were far
from the only paraphernalia used in Central
Yupik Eskimo ceremonials. A major focus among
Bering Sea Eskimo was masked dancing. Follow¬
ing the Bladder Festival a ceremony designated
Kelek occurred, during which shamanic visions
of the spirit world were translated into carved
masks, which were used in elaborate dramatic
performances. Ritually powerful masks were
created representing both the spirits of the game
(yuas) as well as the tunghaks, or shaman's spirit
helpers (figs. 1 80, 348, 436). These large hooped
masks are in the oral tradition directly equated
with the circle-dot motif described above, and
their powerful supernatural gaze directly con¬
trasted to the restricted sight of the other per¬
formers.

Like the circle-dot motif, the large hooped
masks functioned as eyes into a world beyond
the mundane. First of all, the mask was struc¬
turally a ringed center. The face of the mask
was often framed in multiple wooden rings called
ellanguat (literally, "pretend cosmos" or "uni¬
verse”). These concentric rings represent the
different levels of the universe, which was tra¬
ditionally said to contain five upper worlds and
the earth (Ray 1967:66). This same heavenly
symbolism was repeated in ceremonial activity
in which the masked dancer was a key partici¬
pant. For example, multiple rings, also called
ellanguat and decorated with bits of down and
feathers, were lowered and raised from the
inside of the men's house roof during the tra¬
ditional Doll Festival and were said to represent
the retreat and approach of the heavens, com¬
plete with snow and stars (Nelson 1899:496;
Ray 1967).

The image of the encircling ring can also be
seen in the rounded dance fans, fringed in both

fur and feathers, held in the hands of the dancers.
These fans are reminiscent of the mask worn

363. Spotted Mask
Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 153627
Spots were important in a number of
festivals, but the meaning of this mo¬
tif is not clear. In the Bladder Festi¬
val the bladders hung in the qasgiq
were painted white with colored fin-
gerspots (possibly equivalent to spir¬
itual eyes?) to promote spiritual vi¬
sion of the seal inuas. In other
festivals, men's and boy's bodies
were painted and spotted when they
paraded from house to house.

by the central dancer, often having animal or
human faces. With their eyes respectfully down¬
cast during the performance, women even now
speak of the fan's eye as seeing for them while
they dance.

Finally, the open-work design of the fans held
by Yupik Eskimo dancers is to this day explicitly
compared to the pierced hand found as an
appendage on many traditional masks. The hole
in the hand's center, like the opening in the
dance fan, is by some accounts a symbolic
passage through which the spirits of fish and
game come to view their treatment by men and,
if they find it acceptable, repopulate the world.
Thus the dancers, both male and female, holding
dance fans and arms extended in the motions
of the dance, are like gigantic transformation
masks, complete with animal-spirit faces to which
the wooden pierced hands are appended.

Given this perspective, one may reasonably
contrast the efficacy of the mask's supernatural
sight to the lowered gaze of the human perform-

364. Nucleated and Walrus-Face
Dance Fans

Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 38451
(pair), 37127, 38649
These dance fans illustrate two com¬
mon varieties used in the Yukon-
Kuskokwim Delta region. Both sets
originally had caribou fur trim. The
pair on the left also has old-squaw
feathers trimmed with down, and its
hoops, spots, and ringed centers
probably relate to spiritual vision.
The other pair depict walrus spirits,
possibly walrus-men.

266

365. Festival Dress

SI neg. 6370, E.W. Nelson, 1881
Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 49060,
49061

In some festivals Eskimo women
danced with large eagle feather
wands made of golden eagle wing
feathers tied to slender rods. Plumes
of eagle down were attached to the
tips of the feathers, and tufts of wolf
or Siberian reindeer fur to the base.
These wands have lost their attach¬
ments, shown in the accompanying
photograph taken at a festival in An-
draevsky on the Lower Yukon River.
The women wear ermine skin dance
fillets whose hanging portions restrict
sight and relate to the concept of
spiritual vision. The use of ermine
and sight-restricting panels also oc¬
curs on Koniag dance headdresses
(fig. 361). The ermine, a powerful
spirit ally, was respected for its
quickness and courage, exemplary in
such a small creature.

The Traditional Yupik Ceremonial Cycle

After freeze-up in November Yupik Eskimo gath¬
ered in their winter villages, where they enjoyed
a number of public celebrations that marked
winter as the ceremonial season. Five major
ceremonies were performed during this period,
three of which focused on the creative refor¬
mation of the relationship between the human
community and the spirit world on which they
relied. In all three of these ceremonies (the
Bladder Festival, the Feast for the Dead, and the
masked dances known as Kelek) members of the
spirit world were invited into the community,
formally hosted, and finally sent back out of the
human domain. This ritual movement effectively
recreated the relationship between the human
and spirit worlds and placed each in the proper
position to begin the year again.

The Bladder Festival

The celebration of the Bladder Festival ( Naka -
ciuq) marked the opening of the winter cere¬
monial season. At the time of the winter solstice,
the bladders of seals killed that year were
inflated and brought into the men's house. These
bladders were believed to contain the animals'
souls, and during their stay in the men's house

they were treated as honored guests. The blad¬
ders were hung across the back wall, a position
comparable to the position of honor in the men's
house occupied by the elders, who were likewise
nearing the time of their departure from this
world.

The primary function of the Bladder Festival
was to reverse the separation of body and soul
effected at the time of the seal's death. The
Bladder Festival proper was preceded by a
ceremony known as Qaariitaaq in many areas.
During Qaariitaaq, the village boys had their
bodies painted and were led from house to house
each night, where they were given food by the
women. Through this ritual circuit, the children
opened the community to the seal spirits.

Aaniq (literally, "to provide a mother") was
held directly after Qaariitaaq and introduced the
Bladder Festival proper. During Aaniq, two older

ers who dance so that they truly "see," and that
the spirits see them. According to one contem¬
porary Yupik elder, the traditional application of
a white clay base and colored finger spots to
the bladders inflated for the Bladder Festival
was likewise an attempt to promote spiritual
vision on the part of the souls of the seals. The
painting of the wooden masks, as well as the
painting of the body of the dancer, had a similar
effect, allowing the dancer to become visible to
the spirit world and in fact to embody the spirit
at the same time that his human identity was
hidden from the world of men.

In sum, the Yupik universe was traditionally
depicted as subject to constant alteration yet
ultimate unity in the repetition of reproductive
and productive cycles. It is, ultimately, both the
alterations and unity that the hooped mask and
the performance of masked dances embody. The

use of the hooped mask provides a vivid image
for the system of cosmological reproduction
through which the Yupik Eskimo traditionally
viewed, and to some extent continue to view,
the universe. The same image of supernatural
sight that dominates the hooped mask can also
be seen in the rounded lamp and the ringed
bowl, the hole in the kayak float board and the
decorative geometry of traditional ivory ear¬
rings, the central gut skylight opening from the
men's house and the decorative celestial rings
suspended from its ceiling for a dance perform¬
ance. The world was bound, the circle closed.
Yet within it was the passageway leading from
the human to the spirit world. Rimmed by the
ellanguat and transformed by paint and feathers,
the eyes of the mask, themselves often ringed,
looked beyond this world into another.

267

men, dressed in gutskin parkas and referred to
as mothers, led a group of boys who were
termed their dogs around the village. The men
collected newly made bowls filled with akutaq
(a mixture of berries, seal oil, boned fish, and
tallow) from the women, a reversal of the usual
pattern of women bringing cooked meat to their
men in the men's house. In many areas Qaari-
itaaq and the Bladder Festival each lasted for
five days, a number that corresponded with the
five steps that separated the world of the living
and the dead.

During the Bladder Festival, the men's house
and its residents were ritually purified by sweat
baths as well as by the smoke from wild celery
plants. Routine activities were set aside, and the
days were devoted to athletic competitions be¬
tween married and unmarried men, instruction
in and performance of commemorative songs,
and the presentation of special feast foods. All
of these activities were performed with the intent
to draw out the souls of the seals, residing in
the bladders hung along the wall of the men's
house.

On the last night of the Bladder Festival, the
entire village as well as invited guests from
nearby villages gathered in the men's house.
Gifts were given by parents to celebrate their
children's accomplishments. The wooden dolls
of the young girls who had come of age were
distributed. Finally, a huge villagewide distri¬
bution took place, in which large amounts of
frozen and dried fish, and sealskin pokes full of
seal oil were given away. When giving these
gifts, each donor was particular to say that
everything had been given to him. Giving gifts
in someone else's name, particularly that of a
deceased kinsman, was a feature of a number
of ceremonial distributions. To this day in west¬
ern Alaska, social ties between the living are
both created and maintained through the rela¬
tionship between the living and the dead.

Finally, at the close of the Bladder Festival,
pairs of young men took the inflated bladders
along with bunches of wild celery out through
the central smoke hole and down to a hole in
the ice. There the bladders would be deflated
and returned to their underwater home, where
they would boast of their good treatment and
subsequently allow themselves to be taken by
the villagers the following season.

The Feast for the Dead

The annual Feast for the Dead (known in some
areas as Merr'aq, from a word meaning water)
was the public occasion on which the spirits of
the human dead were invited into the human
community to receive the food and clothing they
required. It was initiated when men placed
stakes at the graveside, effectively opening the
village and inviting the spirits to enter as in the
ceremonies prior to the Bladder Festival. As in
the Bladder Festival, the village was ritually
cleansed in preparation for the arrival of the
spirits. Moreover, great care was taken during
the ceremonial period to limit any human activity
(such as sewing or chopping wood) that might
injure or cut the souls as they entered the village.

The Great Feast for the Dead, Elriq, was a
much more complex and elaborate event. It
attracted hundreds of people from the far corners
of the Yukon and Kuskokwim Delta and contin¬
ued for four to six days. Elriq was sequentially
hosted by different villages within a single subre¬
gion. Within each village, the feast was hosted
primarily by a single individual, aided by his
relatives. The major distributions took place on
the fourth and fifth days of the ceremony, when
first the women and then the men ritually clothed
the living namesake according to the sex of the
deceased relative. Gifts were brought into the
men's house through the gut skylight, the re¬
verse route used to remove the human body at
death.

The Gift Festival

Another important winter ceremony was the
"commercial play” known as Petugtaq. This
event is usually described as an exchange of
gifts between the men and women of one village.
Normally the gifts given were relatively small.
The men might begin the play by making tiny
replicas of things that they desired, such as
grass socks, bird-skin caps, or fish-skin mittens.
These replicas would be hung from a wand or
stick and taken to the women of the village.
Each woman then chose one of the images and
prepared the item requested. When all was
ready, the women brought their gifts to the
men's house, where they presented them to the
men, who were duty-bound to provide a suitable
return.

In some areas at least, enjoyment derived
from the pairing of both biologically and socially
unlikely couples in the exchange, because no
one knew who had made a specific request until
the actual distribution. In this context the pairing
of cross cousins was considered particularly
delightful. In Yupik the terms used to refer to
cross-sex cross cousins were nuliacungaq ("dear
little wife”) and uicungaqi "dear little husband").

366. The Bladder Festival

Norton Sound Eskimo: NMNH 44399
This pictographic panel from an en¬
graved ivory drillbow collected at
Cape Nome illustrates the culmina¬
tion of the Bladder Festival, held in
December at the winter solstice. Af¬
ter several days of ceremonial activ¬
ity, the bladders, in which resided
the souls of all the sea mammals
killed during the previous year, were
taken out of the qasgiq and sunk
through a hole in the ice, releasing
the spirits to be reborn as new ani¬
mals next year. In this panel a
procession of men bearing four ritual
paddles and a staff of bladders sur¬
round the ice hole, while men with
knives stab the bladders, one by one,
and sink them.

The Bladder Festival is one of a
group of harvest renewal festivals,
such as the Chukchi Keretkun and
Koryak Whale Festival, found in the
North Pacific-Bering Sea region.

Some details of the ceremonies are
nearly identical, suggesting cross-
cultural contacts.

268

Marriage between cross cousins was not tradi- Although Kevgiq shared common features with
tionally prescribed. However, teasing complete the other ceremonial distributions, it stands out

367. Festival Masks

Norton Sound Eskimo: NMNH 33106,

153623

Masks played an important role in
the festival life of Yupik Eskimo peo¬
ples. Yupik ceremony included a
great variety of mask types, including
huge tunghak masks that were sus¬
pended from the roof of the qasgiq,
to be danced behind; plaque masks
such as the one on the left, which
were worn but not danced with; and
smaller face masks (right), worn by
active dancers. Most of the masks
used in ceremonial performances had
special transformational qualities re¬
lating to legend or religious belief,
presented in iconographic forms not
well understood today. Even so, as
works of art, they stand as major
achievements. Following their use in
ceremonies, most masks were thrown
away or burned, their spiritual es¬
sence rising to the heavens in smoke.

On the left is a probable black bear
mask combined with bird (Raven?)
imagery, and on the right a half-face
transformation mask (cf. fig. 358),
possibly a tunghak, with "toothed"
crescent mouths and eye.

with sexual innuendo characterized the relation¬
ship between cross cousins, as distinct from the
much more serious and respectful relationship
between siblings and parallel cousins, and the
proper day-to-day relationship between husband
and wife.

The Messenger Feast

Another major ceremony held during the winter
season was Kevgiq, from the name for the two
messengers sent to invite the guest village to
the festival. Kevgiq was characterized by a
mutual hosting between villages, whereby one
village would go to another to dance and receive
gifts. It was initiated when a host village pre¬
sented its guests with a long list of wants, and
the guests subseguently reciprocated with a list
of their own. Besides collecting the articles to
be given, each village composed songs describ¬
ing the desired articles and naming the individual
from whom the object was reguested.

There was considerable rivalry as to the qual-
ity and the quantity of the gifts given during
Kevgiq, and in some areas the guests were
designated curukat, or attackers. Kevgiq was
circumscribed by a calculated ambiguity, as the
line between friend and foe was a fine one.

as a particularly elaborate display and distribu¬
tion of the bounty of the harvest, providing a
clear statement of respect to the spirits of the
fish and game. Two important functions of Kev¬
giq were the redistribution of wealth within and
between villages and the expression and main¬
tenance of status distinctions.

The Masquerade Festival

The final major annual winter ceremony was
Kelek, or Itruka'ar, sometimes referred to as the
Masquerade. The complex ritual event involved
the singing of songs of supplication to the spirits
of the game (yuas), accompanied by the per¬
formance of masked dances under the direction
of the shaman. Ritually powerful masks were
created especially for the event and represented
the spirits of the game as well as the tunghaks,
the shaman's spirit helpers. In the preparations
for Kelek, it was the shaman who directed the
construction of the masks through which the
spirits were revealed as at once dangerous and
helpful. Their use, in enactments of past spiritual
encounters, had the power to evoke them in the
future. As in the Bladder Festival, songs were
written and performed by the men of the com¬
munity to draw the spirit world.

269

368. Bird Mask

Koniag Eskimo: MAE 571-12
Masking traditions of the Pacific
Eskimo were as developed as those
of their northern YupLk relatives. This
mask may be one of the set obtained
by Voznesenskii in 1842 from a per¬
formance of a Kodiak Island cere¬
mony. Its feathers missing, the mask
depicts a bird-man spirit. Three-
quarter hoops and circular appen¬
dages are typical Koniag traits, as is
circle decoration, which may be
equivalent to spots used on masks
from the Bering Sea coast.

369. Dance Rattle

Koniag Eskimo: NMMH 90438
Puffin beak dance rattles had special
significance for the Koniag, occurring
in their art as well as in actual cere¬
mony. This dance rattle is made of
two hoops to which dozens of cast-off
beak sheaths of the tufted puffin

Summary

In sum, at least five major events made up the
annual ceremonial cycle in western Alaska. In¬
dividually these ceremonies served to emphasize
different aspects of the relationship between
humans, animals, and the spirit world. The
Bladder Festival along with related ceremonies
insured the rebirth and return of the animals in
the coming harvest season. In the Feast for the
Dead living namesakes were ritually fed and
elaborately clothed to provision and honor the

Dead (Elriq) served the same function within
human society as the Bladder Festival within
animal society, expressing and insuring conti¬
nuity between the living and the dead. The
intravillage Petugtaq and the intervillage Mes¬
senger Feast ( Kevgiq ) played on, exaggerated,
and reversed normal social relationships be¬
tween husband and wife and between host and
guest. Kevgiq also served important social func¬
tions, including the display of status, social

souls of the human dead. The Great Feast of the

control, and the redistribution of wealth. At the
same time it provided a clear statement to the
spirits of the game that the hunters were once
again ready to receive them anew. Finally, the
Masquerade (Keleq) involved masked dances
that dramatically recreated past spiritual en¬
counters to elicit their participation in the future.
Together the ceremonies comprised a cyclical
view of the universe whereby right action in the
past and present reproduced abundance in the
future.

have been attached with sinew ties.
An illustration of this type of rattle
was noted on a Koniag ceremonial
paddle (fig. 51). Although wide¬
spread in the historical period, only
one of these rattles has been found in
a prehistoric Koniag site, dating to
the early 18th century. These rattles
may have been a recent introduction
from the Northwest Coast, where
they also occur. Perhaps the resem¬
blance of rattles, hoop, and crossbar
grip to the structure of Siberian sha¬
man drums is coincidental.

270

Potlatch Ceremonialism on the Northwest Coast

Frederica de Laguna

370. Shaman's Rattle
Tlingit: NMNH 9257

This rattle may represent the shaman
himself or one of his spirits. His col¬
larbones and vertebrae are sculpted
in relief. The grinning face and ani¬
mated posture of his detailed hands
give vitality to the figure. Human hair
forms his moustache, beard, and hair,
which is long and disheveled in the
manner of Tlingit shamans. Asym¬
metrical paint designs on the face are
also typical of shamans.

371. Tlingit Curing Ceremony
AMNH neg. 335775; MAE 211-2
Tlingit curing shamans wore masks,
robes, amulets, and rattles. Black
oyster catcher rattles were unique to
shamans and were used to cure ill¬
ness caused by witchcraft. The bird
is shown with neck arched as in its
bouncing, chattering courtship dance.
On its back the torture of a suspected
sorcerer is seen, surrounded by hali¬
but fins and octopus tentacles.

Northwest Coast ceremonialism was founded on
the religious belief in personal encounters be¬
tween men and supernatural spirits or beings.
Ceremonies involved the elaborate display, by
individuals, by kin groups, or by secret societies,
of the powers or privileges obtained through
such supernatural encounters. Display privileges
might include names, titles, crests (emblems),
as well as songs, dances, costumes, ceremonial
paraphernalia, ritual acts, and magical feats.
These were sanctioned or explained by tales of
their supernatural origins, and the rights to them
were validated by gifts to the invited audience.
Much of representative art in carving and paint¬
ing had ceremonial functions, drawing its inspi¬
ration and themes from the same supernatural
experiences.

The shaman was one who had received powers
from personal encounters with supernaturals.
Although the spirits that had served a dead
shaman were sometimes believed to return more
readily to a close relative than to another, each
novice shaman had to seek the power for himself

271

372. Shaman’s Masks
Tlingit: (clockwise from upper left)
MAE 4105-2, 2448-9, 5795-26,
5795-31, 4105-1

Asymmetric mask painting, typical of
festival face painting, is a common
feature of Tlingit shaman masks, as
is representation of female spirits
wearing labrets. Asymmetrical fea¬
tures, like closed or missing eyes, or
twisted sockets, recall historical re¬
ports of such people. MAE 5795-31
is an old mask of sensitive passivity,
perhaps of death. Most Tlingit sha¬
man masks are humanlike, but 5795-
26 is semihuman, perhaps represent¬
ing a female salmon spirit. The signif¬
icance of hair streaming from the
eyes is mysterious.

373. Club and Necklace Amulets
Tlingit: NMNH 73831, 168372
Shamans drew their power in part
from their special amulets, some of
which resembled normal objects
while others were unique to sha¬
mans. A model war club with wood
rather than stone blade, and with
frog and human (shaman?) carvings
represents the former class, while the
necklace, with its engraved designs
of probable Athapaskan origin, repre¬
sents the second. Tlingit shamans
considered foreign materials, styles.

and artifacts to make powerful amu¬
lets.

272

374. Pendant Amulets

(Clockwise from top) Nishga: NMNH
9813; Tlingit: MAE 2539-30, NMNH
229546b

This group includes an antler amulet
depicting a sea creature — probably
a whale — with abalone inlays; a
comblike hair fastener (it was taboo
for shamans to comb their hair)
showing two men struggling with a
bear; and a killer whale amulet made
from walrus ivory traded from the
Bering Sea.

273

375. Bear and Duck Rattles
Tsimshian: CMC VII C339, 340
Tlingit: NMNH 20828
Great diversity of rattle types existed
among Northwest Coast groups.
These Tsimshian rattles take the
form of bears with humanoid figures
peering between their ears. They
were probably carved as dance rat¬
tles for a chief. Tufted puffin beaks
were used as tinklers on Tlingit
aprons and leggings, on circular
frame rattles, and on baton rattles
such as the one below, carved as an
abstract duck. Wings, tail, and head
are detailed with formlines; the long
neck forms the handle. Such rattles
were used in sets by shamans and
dancers.

or herself after receiving the call. The super¬
natural was most often met in its animal guise,
but this was only the outer shape, or garment,
which the supernatural could doff to show its
"real" humanlike form. This transformation was
symbolized by the elaborate animal and bird
masks of the central Northwest Coast, which
opened to reveal the human face inside.

The shaman often kept a piece of the super¬
natural animal or used its likeness as a powerful
charm. The totemic animal crest, however, was
the secular memento of a similar supernatural
encounter, inherited as the emblem of a kin
group. The totem poles of the southern Tlingit,
Haida, and Tsimshian remind us, in fact, of the
representations of the Siberian shaman's guard¬
ian spirit in the form of a bird, perching on a
pole in front of the tent. The system of crests,
associated titles, and their ceremonial display
was most highly developed among the Tsimshian
and was especially characteristic of the other
peoples with matrilineal descent, the Tlingit and
the Haida.

Among the Tsimshian, Kwakiutl speakers, Bella
Coola, and Nootka, there existed winter cere¬
monials in which the spirits were invoked to
inspire the novices being initiated into the secret
societies. Like family or clan crests and secular
titles, the rights to sacred names, songs, dances,
and ritual acts were inherited in family lines.
Use of these prerogatives, however, required
initiation into the secrets involved, a rite of
passage that paralleled the spirit quest of the
shaman. The chief or family head, as the religious
leader, controlled the initiations and determined
which roles the initiates should play, just as the
chief controlled the display of secular crests.
The most dramatic secret society performances
originated among the Bella Bella (northern Kwak¬
iutl) and from there spread in attenuated form
to the Haida and Tlingit and also southward as
far as the Columbia River.

All ceremonies involved the sharing and giving
of food and the giving and receiving of property.
Such feasting and transfer of wealth, carried out
formally on a large scale and preferably to guests
from outside the village, is the potlatch, to call
it by the widely known word from Chinook
jargon. Feasting and gift-giving were necessary
after every display of ceremonial rights, and
full-scale potlatches were normally given in the

274

376. Shaman's Bow
Tlingit: NMNH 324930
Wands, batons, spears, daggers, and
other items were used for display,
carried in the hands by Tlingit chiefs
and shamans on state occasions like
potlatches and festivals. This over¬
sized bow has a carved human head
at each end, one singing and one
talking. Similar paired faces were
carved on shaman's headrests used
during fasting (Wardwell 1978:87).
Ceremonial bows were often made
with matching arrows, and were
sometimes used in curing ceremo¬
nies.

377. "Kolosh Indians from Sitka
Island, 1842"

Il'ia Voznesenskii. MAE 1142-32
Voznesenskii's painting appears to
depict the dance of a Tlingit initiate
into a secret society known as the
"Dog Eaters." This ceremony spread
over the northern coast in the late
precontact period, probably originat¬
ing among the Bella Bella or Heiltsuq.
The initiate, with red-painted face, is
posessed by the motivating spirit and
is hungry to eat raw flesh. He wears
cedarbark rings over his shoulders
and eagle down in his hair. He acts
wild, and attendants, whose faces are
painted and also wear eagle down,
restrain him. In the Kwakiutl version,
"Hamatsa" which is still performed,
rattles are used to calm the new
dancer, as shown at the right. Drum¬
ming and singing are also part of the
performance.

378. Shaman's Rattle
Haida: NMNH 89052
Globular rattles were used by sha¬
mans all over the northern coast to
combat evil spirits. Both sides of this
rattle portray crouching figures, the
center one with a beaklike nose, sur¬
rounded by others with long U-shaped
fins stretching from their heads. The
meaning of these figures, like most
shamanic art, is derived from super¬
natural experiences and cannot be
deciphered without information from
the owner, who in this case was Tsil-
wax, a shaman from New Gold Har¬
bor in the Queen Charlotte Islands.

'-9' •

/m-3i

IS OZ.

winter season, when the summer's work had
assured ample supplies to feast the guests. This
season of dark skies was also the time when
supernatural forces were most strongly felt, as
the spirits drew near the village. Potlatching and
sacred dances were combined into elaborate
ceremonial sequences, never two alike, during
which houses might be built and dedicated,
totem poles raised, marriages made or cere¬
monially unmade, valuable names and titles
given or assumed, the deceased memorialized
and their heirs formally installed, novices initi¬
ated into the secret dance groups, ceremonial
debts discharged and new ones imposed.

The piling up of blankets to be given away,
the Midas gleam of valuable "coppers" illumi¬
nated by grease-fed flames that threaten the
roof planks, the serving of enormous portions of
rich foods in crest-carved boxes and bowls, the
processions of singers and performers behind
the dance paddles of their leaders, the splendor
of eagle down floating from the headdresses of
blanket-clad dancers, the thuds of bare feet on
the hardened earth, the thwack of pounding
batons on resounding planks, the rumble of box
drum or skin-covered tambourine that seems to
penetrate the very body of the listener, the eerie
whistles ("voices of the spirits") crying from the
woods, the elaborate dramas performed with
masks and artifices to simulate bloody killing
and other fearful acts, the terrifying evocation

275

276

379 Potlatch Gathering

BCPM neg. PN 11880, G.T. Emmons,

1885

Emmons took this photograph of a
group of Tlingit of the Nanyaayi clan
posed in ceremonial dance costume
in front of Chief Shakes' house,
known as the "Dogfish" house, in
Wrangel in 1885. Chief Shakes
stands in the center, dressed in a
Chilkat blanket.

380. Copper
Tlingit: FM 19022
From Vancouver Island northward,
Northwest Coast chiefs prized
plaques of copper, which represented
wealth and prestige. Their peculiar
and distinctive shape, flaring at the
top and embossed with a T-shaped
ridge on the lower half, has never
been satisfactorily explained, al¬
though there is some evidence that it
refers metaphorically to a human
body. Valuable coppers had names,
and often a painted or engraved rep¬
resentation of the appropriate crea¬
ture on the top, or face, of the cop¬
per. This one shows a beaver,
identifiable by his large incisors,
high, rounded nose, and the two
halves of his tail in the upper cor¬
ners. Coppers were displayed at im¬
portant ceremonial occasions, where
they attested to the high rank and
wealth of the owner. They were
sometimes given away, whole or cut
in pieces, at a potlatch or placed on
the grave of a chief.

381. Applique Tunic
Haida: NMNH 89194
A dogfish covers the front of this
dancing tunic, appliqued in red flan¬
nel and outlined with white beads. It
is presented in "split" form, with
pectoral fins and halves of the dorsal
fin at the sides, and the sides of the
second fin and the tail below. The
high forehead (the dogfish's nose),
gill slits, and sharp teeth are further
recognition features. On the back is a
sea wolf, a mythical being with a
wolfs head, paws, and tail, and the
killer whale's dorsal fin and flukes.
Sea wolf and dogfish are both crests
of the Haida Eagle moiety.

of his spirit familiars by the shaman running
around the fire with rattle and clash of bone
necklace until he falls exhausted in a trance, the
dignified recital of the legend authenticating the
crests and displays of a chief — all these are
elements characteristic of Northwest Coast cer¬
emonials.

Through intermarriage, trade, and the appro¬
priation of rights to ritual privileges from other
groups by capturing or even killing the owner,
such displays were spread up and down the
coast, and ceremonies were elaborated by the
addition of foreign features or the invention of
new ones.

No matter how varied in form or stated pur¬
pose, these occasions were alike in dramatizing
the power, privilege, and wealth of those who
gave or sponsored them. Such displays were
made with pride, for it was only the wealthy
chief, of a wealthy group, with the additional
support of his wife and her relatives, who could
afford to give a ceremony of any importance. A
woman chief, holding her position in default of
a suitable male, could also sponsor ceremonies,
similarly assisted by her husband and his people.
Lesser chiefs in the group might either contribute
to the resources of their superior or host smaller
affairs of their own, but everyone shared in the
glory, since the contributions of each were
publicly recognized.

Guests, the necessary witnesses to the pre¬
rogatives claimed, were also honored and "paid
for their trouble,” those of rank and wealth
receiving extra, and would remember the gen¬
erosity of the gift when they in turn became
hosts. So binding was the obligation to pay
witnesses that when potlatch guests danced in
their crest regalia to thank their hosts, the guests
had to pay the hosts. Although the Tlingit
shaman required payment before attempting a
cure, the shaman and his relatives would dis¬
tribute gifts to their opposites when he first
exhibited his powers. This validated his profes¬
sional name, that of his principal spirit.

"Chiefs fight with property,” the Kwakiutl
have said, and there was certainly a warlike
aspect to much of Northwest Coast ceremoni¬
alism. Rivalry tended to follow traditional lines,
often between two groups of invited guests; the
local group or those first to arrive and the out-
of-town later arrivals. The latter would approach
in a line of canoes abreast, and though they
might dance and sing onboard to show peaceful
intentions, the formation was that of an armed
landing party, ready to storm the beach. At a
Salish potlatch they might indeed engage in a
violent and often bloody shoving match with
prior arrivals. Among other tribes, the potlatch
host might don warrior's garb to show that he

was not afraid to sacrifice property, which in
the past might include slaves (war captives)
given to the guests to kill. (The method most
often employed by the Tlingit was by strangu¬
lation with a pole across the neck, in the way
that the sacred bear was killed by Asiatic tribes
of the North Pacific.) Pride and arrogance, es¬
pecially among the Kwakiutl, might pit one chief
against another, and the way to silence a rival
was to overwhelm him with gifts that he could
not return or ruin him in a competition of
property destruction. Usually, however, the host
chief was punctiliously polite in receiving his
guests, as was the guest chief in offering the
comfort of his crests (symbolically) to the be¬
reaved host of a funeral potlatch. All offerings
were received with profuse thanks. Even the
touchy Kwakiutl chiefs claiming the highest
privileges would reassure each other that their
"word was true” and express thankfulness that
the other was indeed "still walking in the road
given to our grandfathers by the Winter Cere¬
monial Spirit” and obeying "the laws laid down
by the ancestors at the beginning of the world.”
The authorized joking and buffoonery that en¬
livened even the most serious ceremonial oc¬
casions undoubtedly relieved the tension and
anxiety and were particularly relished when
they mocked the prerogatives of the chiefs.

Status and privilege, both secular and reli¬
gious, were inherent in the names or titles borne
by aristocratic men and women, "Real People,”
as the Tsimshian called them. Increasingly im¬
portant names would be assumed by one who
had inherited or received the rights to them.
Securing such status for one's self and passing
it on to a successor was a dominant concern and
often the real reason for the ceremony. Some
songs, dances, and performances connected with
sacred names were exhibited only when they
were being given to an heir or to a son-in-law
for his children. Thus, the most important cer¬
emony among the Haida was the house-building
potlatch given by a chief and his wife to the
husband's clan on behalf of their children, the
father's "opposites,” for only children so hon¬
ored could become chiefs, while those whose
parents gave lesser ceremonies had lower status,
and the no-accounts were the children of parents
who had never potlatched. There were few
without status, since a potlatching couple would
sponsor the children of relatives and adopt
orphans.

The principal reason for a Nootka potlatch was
to transfer a chief's prerogatives to his children
(names, dances, territorial rights), and a potlatch
invariably ended the Shamans' Dance (or Wolf
Dance) initiation, which also transferred privi¬
leges. The Nootka loved giving these ceremonies

277

383. The Nagunaks Crest Hat (Many-
Finned Killer Whale)

Tsimshian: CMC VII-C-1766a
In a tale about Nagunaks, a superna¬
tural killer whale chief who rules be¬
low the sea, high-ranking human visi¬
tors are entertained for a year in his
watery house, then sent back to their
people in a copper canoe, dressed in
seaweed, and carrying this killer
whale crest hat and other gifts (Boas
1916:290). All important crest ob¬
jects had such links with the mythical
past.

278

382. Crest Headdress
Tlingit: MAE 571-19
Raven's head protrudes from the
forehead of a hook-beaked creature in
this double crest headdress. Painted
hide flaps extend from the sides of
the lower head, suggesting the iden¬
tity of a sea-being. At one time,
many more sea lion whiskers and a
fringe of baleen strips radiated from
the top. Headdresses like this one
were worn in potlatches and on festi¬
val occasions, and were displayed
along with family emblems and heir¬
looms at the memorial for a deceased
chief.

384. "The Funeral of the One-Armed
Kolosh Chieftain (Kukhantan)"

Il'ia Voznesenskii. MAE 1142-28
Voznesenskii sketched this drawing
from observation of a Tlingit Chief s
funeral in Sitka in 1844. Providing
excellent ethnographic detail, it
shows the dead chief in state,
dressed in a Chilkat blanket and front-
let headdress decorated with sea lion
whiskers and surrounded by other
Chilkat blankets, a copper, a painted
conical crest hat, and chests of valua¬
bles. Mourners, perhaps chiefs, wear¬
ing ear or hair ornaments line the left
wall, against which ceremonial staffs
are propped. A large gathering of
men and women, some wearing la-
brets, button blankets, and painted
spruce-root hats, sits before the fire,
around which the visiting chiefs' cer¬
emonial spears have been laid. A
drummer, probably a shaman, sings;
and behind him a figure, possibly
someone representing the deceased,
stands with painted or darkened face,
fur cape, and staff. To the right,
cloaked figures, probably orators, one
with a chiefs staff, pay respects.

The name of the deceased indi¬
cates he was of the Wolf moiety, so
many of the mourners assembled
would have been their "opposites,''
the Raven moiety. The close kin of
the deceased would have been
dressed in mourning rags, their faces
smeared with soot. After two to four
days of mourning, a hole was broken
through a side wall of the house,
through which the deceased and his
possessions were carried to his fu¬
neral pyre. After cremation, women
gathered the remains and deposited
them in a special burial house.

(Pierce 1975:15).

so much that it was the children and youths who
held the high titles, while their elders, the
"retired” chiefs, directed affairs from backstage.
Secure in their prestige, these former chiefs no
longer had to worry about the protocol of their
own seating or the order in which they received
gifts, in contrast to their Kwakiutl neighbors,
who squabbled over such matters. The Nootka
had no use for coppers, and did not kill slaves
at ceremonies; rather, they often initiated slaves
to add more drama to the event. Since everyone
was initiated, there were no secrets about the
supernatural wolves and how they were imper¬
sonated. It was all a well-staged drama, with
excitement, fun, and gorgeous display.

Of much more importance to the Nootka was
the knowledge of magic formulas and sacred
rituals, originally obtained from encounters with
the supernatural and inherited as closely held
family secrets. The ceremonies involved were
never public. Most potent of such powers was
that of the Nootka chief who owned the ritual
for calling dead whales to drift ashore on his
beach. One such rite involved a sacred shrine
with human corpses stolen from their graves
and rigged like puppets so that they could be
made to imitate the harpooning of a whale (cf.
fig. 217). Another chief owned the ritual of
calling whales through a human skull used as a
trumpet. Only ceremonial bathing to the point
of numbness, repeated many days, purified and
prepared the chief for such awesome rites.

The theme of death, and ambivalent feelings
toward the dead, ran through many ceremonies,
although it was most apparent in funeral or
memorial potlatches when the deceased were
called by name to share the food and tobacco.
One of the most important ceremonies among
the Bella Coola, as among the Kwakiutl, was the
return of the bride price to the son-in-law,
"repurchasing the wife,” essential for all re¬
spectable marriages. This handsome payment
was made to the husband at the beginning of a
potlatch he was giving and was added to the
wealth he distributed. The potlatch raised the
status of his children and "strengthened the
seat.” Moreover, it also smoothed the way of
the donor after death, when his spirit had to
retrace the path of his predecessors back to the
mountain where the ancestor first came to earth,
there to don the discarded bird or animal gar¬
ment of the ancestor and ascend to heaven. The
most dramatic moment in the potlatch was the
visit of a deceased relative, played by a secret
society member disguised in an elaborate cos¬
tume made by the "carpenters” (supernaturally
endowed artists) to represent the ancestral an¬
imal or bird and accompanied by the whistles
of the secret society. After imitating the animal

through clever acting and manipulation of strings
controlling the costume, the figure left the house,
and the host threw down a copper behind it or
into the fire, thereby destroying its value but
"making bone for the dead.” At a Kwakiutl
memorial potlatch, the masked figure of the
dead chief might appear, escorted by living
colleagues.

The original winter ceremonial may have been
like the Coast Salish winter dances, simply a
way to appease the spirits that were troubling
their human partners. This malaise could be
relieved only by a "power sing” sponsored by
someone with ceremonial powers. While he
fasted, each spirit-inspired person danced in
turn to his or her own song, accompanied by
singers and drummers and followed by dancing
helpers. This continued every night until all the
powers were satisfied, the sponsor rendering
the last song, and ended with a distribution of
gifts to the audience. Unlike the Salish, whose
ceremonial powers had no definite shape and
who danced in stylized fashion, the originators
of the secret society performances were prob¬
ably inspired by animals and imitated them in
their dances and costumes. One might also see
animal mimicry at a Tlingit potlatch, when a
young man danced behind a curtain with only
his crest hat visible and moving like the Raven
or Halibut it represented. Those possessed by
an animal spirit became "crazy” and acted like
animals, gradually losing their human appear¬
ance. This transformation is shown in masks of
the Land Otter Man (worn by shamans) or of
the Wild Man or Wild Woman (worn by secret
society dancers). The loss of humanity is most
evident in the loss of appetite for human food
and the craving for the raw flesh devoured by
animals.

The most widely known and probably one of
the oldest societies was that of persons inspired
by supernatural wolves, who in consequence bit
live dogs and ate them — a horrible act, since
dog flesh was believed poisonous. Dog-Eaters
were known to all the tribes but the Nootka.
Among the latter, the supernatural wolves, im¬
personated by the secret society members, sim¬
ply kidnapped initiates to teach them their in¬
herited rights. The Bella Bella surpassed the
Dog-Eaters by creating the worst monsters of
all — eaters of human flesh, inspired by the
"Cannibal at the North End of the World.” Their
act was the most terrifying, since a corpse was
the object of horrified aversion and was believed
to be the source of power for the witch or killing
shaman.

The Cannibal Dancer as initiate was essential
to the Kwakiutl winter ceremonial, a role filled
by the son of the chief who had inherited the

279

right. His daughter became the Cannibal's fe¬
male attendant. Associated with them were
many other characters who were being initiated
into the society: Grizzly Bears, Warriors, Fools,
the Fire-Thrower, the Smasher of Property, and
those who had to be restrained by ropes passed
through slits in their flesh. In addition, there
were the already initiated, some of whom were
active in handling the novices, and the older
members who controlled the society. Although
the latter acted in their sacred capacity with
their sacred names, they were the same persons
as the secular chiefs. Among the Tsimshian,
there was the society of the Dancers and the
society of the Dog-Eaters, but only certain chiefs
held the right to be Cannibals or Smashers. The
Bella Coola combined the Cannibal and Dog-
Eater as one character in their most important
society.

The Cannibal initiate actually bit people in the
arm — those who had inherited the right to be
bitten and who were paid for their pain by the
initiate's sponsor — -just as other performers would
run amok through the houses, smashing things,
if taboos were broken — again on purpose and
with restitution. But it is not entirely clear
whether the Cannibal actually ate a corpse,
although it is known that the flesh he bit (usually
cut by sleight of hand) from a living person was
not swallowed — it would be too poisonous. Still,
there is some evidence that the female attendant
of the Cannibal novice carried a mummified
body in her arms as she danced to pacify the
Cannibal and that he actually ate some of it. It
is said too that slaves were once sacrificed for

his food. Yet all this could easily have been
faked.

The penalty for revealing the secrets of the
society was death — death to the performer who
stumbled and exposed the hoax, for it would be
too expensive to initiate the whole audience;
death to the Tsimshian artificers if their won¬
derful mechanical contraptions broke just when
the chief tried to display his sacred powers; and
death to the Bella Coola member who betrayed
his society's secrets and who was thrown to the
ground and strangled by two men who sat on a
pole across his neck.

But the most extraordinary feature about all
these winter ceremonial acts is that they were
knowingly performed as frauds and tricks.

385. Crest Headdress
Haida: NMNH 89036
Wooden crest hats were carved in im¬
itation of woven basketry hats. On
this hat the crest is a beaver holding
two humans with his claws and
wearing as his hat a column of four
cylinders that rises between his form¬
line ears. The four formline figures
painted on the brim probably repre¬
sent coppers. The brilliant red pig¬
ment is Vermillion, made in China
and acquired by trade.

280

Art and Culture Change at the Tlingit- Eskimo Border

Bill Holm

386. Whale House

SI neg. 74-3623, Winter and Pond
photo

The right to own and display crest
objects commemorating the real or
mythological origins, history, or
events of the clan was vested in the
chief and could be transferred only
by inheritance or sale. At important
occasions, the clan's valuable crest
objects were put on display for all to
marvel at. This photograph shows the
interior of the Whale House at Kluk-
wan, with members of the Ganaxtedi
clan wearing crest objects in front of
the Raven screen, flanked by the
Woodworm post at the left, and the
Raven post at the right.

387. Chiefs Chest
Tlingit: NMNH 60176
Crest objects and clan regalia were
stored in bentwood chests, them¬
selves decorated with crests and clan
designs. A circular face surrounded
by a corona and flanked by birds dec¬
orates the front of this chiefs chest,
rather than the usual stylized form-
line figure. It was probably a specific
crest, the moon. Much of the original
paint has worn away, but enough re¬
mains to show that it was painted in
the traditional manner. The two pro¬
file birds are elegantly rendered in
formlines. Inlay of snail opercula in
the broad front edge of the lid is
common on carved chests, but less so
in the edge of the bottom board.

The cultural continuum extending along the arch
of the North Pacific Rim, and, with some logic,
reaching southward on the American side as far
as northern California, links peoples of myriad
languages and physical shapes. Those cultural
links are amazingly strong over certain long
stretches of the Pacific shore. The linguistically
diverse groups occupying the 1,200-mile coast¬
line between the Columbia River and Yakutat
Bay share among them so many features of
environment and culture that they are univer¬
sally described as making up the Northwest
Coast culture area. Within this larger continuity
there are numerous culturally diverse sectors,
shading more or less imperceptibly with one
another at their junctures. The similarities of
their resource bases, the relative uniformity of
climate (given the 15° increase in latitude be¬
tween the south and north ends of the region),
and especially the almost continuous network of
waterways allowing easy contact between these
sectors were factors in the development and
maintenance of a high degree of cultural hom¬
ogeneity along the whole Northwest Coast.

The northernmost of these Northwest Coast
people, the Yakutat Tlingit, were expanding
westward along the mainland shore of the Gulf
of Alaska into Eyak territory in the years just
preceding the first European sea voyages to the
region. The coast from Cape Spencer, at the
mouth of Cross Sound, to the northwest all the
way to Prince William Sound is a nearly unbroken
shore open to the prevailing southeasterly winter
storm winds. Nearly midway in that 300-mile
shore is Yakutat Bay, one of only half a dozen
refuges available and the only one relatively
safe to enter in storm conditions.

The western shores of the Gulf of Alaska were
home to Pacific Yupik-speaking people, the Chu-
gach of Prince William Sound, and the Koniag
of Kodiak Island. Their use of framed, skin-
covered boats, gutskin parkas, throwing boards,
stone oil lamps, semisubterranean sod-roofed
houses, and many other Eskimo features estab¬
lished them clearly to be part of that arcticwide

cultural continuum. The country they lived in
supported that culture well, with an abundance
of sea mammals, fish, shellfish, and birds. But
it also differed markedly from most other Eskimo
lands in its vegetation and its mountainous inlet-
and island-broken character — the westernmost
extension of the glaciated, forest-covered North¬
west Coast.

In spite of the intervening and forbidding open
waters, the Chugach and Koniag had contact
with the Tlingit of the eastern shores of the gulf,
but it was more often than not an unfriendly
and even violent contact, to judge by the tradi¬
tions of both peoples and the record of their
actions during the early historic period (de La¬
guna 1972:158—75). They were, in fact, mutual
enemies. Some of this contact and exchange
took place secondhand, through the intermedi¬
ary Eyak, with whom the Yakutat Tlingit had
frequent and friendly relations. So in spite of
the difficulties posed by differing cultures, an¬
cient enmities, and intervening open sea, there
was considerable interchange of ideas, and the
Northwest Coast overlay on Pacific Eskimo cul¬
ture is obvious and universally recognized.

Influences in the other direction, although less
overt, were nonetheless present. These ex¬
changes certainly increased after the arrival of
fleets of Aleut and Pacific Eskimo baidarkas in
the service of the Russian fur hunters, but
evidence for intercultural borrowing in pre-Eu¬
ropean times is convincing.

The most obvious Pacific Eskimo import among
the Tlingit (specifically the Yakutat and Huna)
was the sea otter harpoon-arrow and probably
the surround technique with which it was used
(de Laguna 1971:381, plates 108—12; Emmons
and de Laguna in press: ms. pp. 310—12). All
the details of the sea otter arrow — the tapered,
red-painted shaft, the gracefully proportioned
bone foreshaft and its method of hafting, the cut
of the eagle-feather Retching, and the decorated,
braided-sinew line — are completely Eskimo in
character (fig. 76). Use of a cylindrical, bell¬
mouthed wooden quiver was shared by north-

281

western Tlingit and Pacific Eskimo sea hunters,
but on which end of the gulf it originated is not

position to grasp the shaft of the dart. The 388. Spear Thrower
typical Tlingit throwing board is extremely short T1ingit: NMNH 20771

clear. Several known quivers from Prince William
Sound are decorated with Tlingit-like designs
modified in typically Chugach ways.

Although the Pacific Eskimo harpoon-arrow
was adopted intact by Tlingit hunters, the throw¬
ing board was not. Retention of this ancient
implement by the Eskimo is understandable for
people hunting sea mammals from kayaks and
baidarkas. For a hunter balancing a narrow,
decked boat there were clear advantages to the
throwing board that could be grasped, fitted
with its dart, brought into throwing position, and
cast with one hand while holding a steadying
paddle with the other. Pacific Eskimo and Aleut
hunters also used the bow, but apparently only
from the two-man boat, with the paddler in the
stern cockpit and the archer in the bow. Tlingit
sea hunters, in open dugout canoes with two-
man crews, had no need for the special attributes
of the throwing board — the bow was just as
convenient and perhaps more accurate.

If Tlingit hunters failed to adopt the throwing
board, how can the existence in present-day
collections of a dozen or so throwing boards,
heavily decorated with true northern Northwest
Coast figures, be explained (fig. 388)? It has
been suggested that they were made by Tlingit
carvers in imitation of examples brought to their
country by Aleut sea otter hunters in the early
fur trade days, and that their rarity, and the lack
of knowledge of their use by latter-day Tlingits,
must be the result of their failure to catch on
among the local hunters. That they were derived
from a Pacific Eskimo or Aleut prototype seems
likely, but that they were ever intended for
hunting use does not. Although many of them
show signs of venerable age and wear and have
a grooved upper face and a lug to engage the
socket of the harpoon, they do not seem suitable
for hunting. Every Aleut and Eskimo throwing
board, from Greenland to the end of the Aleutian

between the forefinger hole and the socket lug
(averaging just over half the length on a typical
Pacific Eskimo board, fig. 193) and has a straight,
tapered handle with the index finger hole cen¬
tered, resulting in a cramped, insecure and
ungainly grip. Even though it would be inefficient
and awkward to throw a harpoon with the Tlingit
board, those extant are nearly all well worn.
Their decorations, which closely resemble the
carvings on shamans' amulets, wands, and rat¬
tles, suggest that they were used as weapons
in the struggles against malevolent supernatural
beings rather than as practical hunting imple¬
ments (Holm and Vaughan 1982:76—79). George
Emmons, in a note accompanying a Tlingit
throwing board in the American Museum of
Natural History (cat. no. 19-1164), described it
as "elaborately carved to represent an old Yak-
utat spirit of a celebrated Shaman 'Sick-kear-
kow' with a spirit head dress on at one end, in
the centre a legendary spirit from Yakutat coun¬
try, 'Shem' and at the other end a hair seal”
(Emmons n.d.b:90). Stylistically they are old,
and this, along with their patination, apparent
shamanic use, and later Tlingit unfamiliarity,
suggests that the throwing-board concept was
around for a long time, perhaps preceding the
historic arrival of the baidarka flotillas of Aleut,
Koniag, and Pacific Eskimo sea otter hunters
(see page 76).

A number of object types that resemble typical
Tlingit artifacts but were made and used by the
Koniag and Chugach have been collected as
early as Cook's third expedition, in 1778. They
illustrate varying degrees of influence primarily
from east to west, although some of the simi¬
larities may actually represent Eskimo concepts
that have been incorporated in Tlingit and other
northern Northwest Coast design traditions.
Carved wooden grease bowls from both areas,
in the form of animals (most often seals) and

The very few Tlingit spear throwers,
or throwing boards, that survive are
all carved with figures that resemble
those on shaman's rattles and amu¬
lets. Although completely functional,
they are poorly shaped for efficient
use (right) compared to Pacific Es¬
kimo throwing boards (left). It is pos¬
sible that they were all shamans' in¬
struments, weapons to be used in
war with the spirits. Whichever is the
case, they are often beautifully
carved. A long-beaked, crested bird
(a kingfisher or merganser) bites an
asymmetrically rendered sea creature
on the shaft of this board. The legs,
hands, and face of a man, with closed
eyes, emerge from recesses in the
grip. Although collected in the late
19th century, its early style, heavy
wear and patination indicate a much
earlier origin.

389. Grease Bowl

Chugach Eskimo: NMNH 168623

(above right)

Pacific Eskimo carved grease bowls
resemble Tlingit bowls in their prin¬
cipal form, but are generally shal¬
lower and with more naturalistic
treatment of the animal or bird
heads. They often include Tlingit-like
treatment of the details, such as the
ovoid wing joints of this merganser.
Another decorative feature favored
by the Chugach artists was an inlay
of rows of small, white, glass beads
rather than the opercula typical of
Tlingit bowls. This is a fine example
of a Pacific Eskimo bowl, with sweep¬
ing form, upraised head, bead inlay
and deep color, the result of long
years of oil saturation.

chain, has a shaped grip that fits the hand, birds, share a number of features. The bowl of
placing the fingers and thumb in the natural such a vessel (fig. 389) is typically broad and

282

390. Grease Bowl

Chugach Eskimo: MAE 536-4 (above
left)

Even more Tlingit in style than fig.
389, but still identifiable as Pacific
Eskimo in origin, is this unused
grease bowl in the form of a mergan¬
ser. The formline details of the wings
and tail joint are close approxima¬
tions of northern Northwest Coast de¬
signs, but certain anomalies in their
structure suggest that they are from
outside the tradition. As in the case
of painted hats, the degree of adher¬
ence to the introduced design tradi¬
tion varies from piece to piece. The
flat form of the vessel, the naturalis¬
tic head, and the rows of dots analo¬
gous to bead inlay are all features of
Chugach and Koniag bowls. The
bird's feet are delicately and natural-
istically carved in relief on the body
under the tail. Its pristine state sug¬
gests that it was made for sale. On
the Northwest Coast, the tourist
trade was well advanced at the be¬
ginning of the 19th century.

round with the ends, in the form of the creature's
head and tail, raised and the inner surface fluted
with one or more shallow grooves paralleling
the rim. The heads of Prince William Sound and
Kodiak Island bowls tend to be represented in a
simplified, naturalistic style consistent with other
Alaskan Eskimo sculpture, while comparable
Tlingit bowls have the heads, as well as other
anatomical parts, carved and detailed according
to the well-known stylistic conventions of the
region. A number of Pacific Eskimo bowls, in¬
cluding some collected in the first years of the
19th century, show detailing of tail and wings
or flippers that is clearly derived from Tlingit
designs. Some of these (fig. 390) follow the
Northwest Coast conventions so closely that if
the bowls themselves were not so obviously
Pacific Eskimo in style they could be taken for
Tlingit work. In almost every case, however,
there are clues in the details of the designs that
indicate their non-Tlingit origin.

Other objects with Tlingit-like decoration come
from the Pacific Eskimo. Some of the wooden
quivers, mentioned above, combine geometri¬
cally detailed bands around the tubular body,
with modified form-line ovoids and U-shaped
feather or fin designs on the expanded end. Two
of them (Taylor Museum 4999 and Berlin Mu¬
seum IV A 6608, Birket-Smith 1953:fig. 13) are

so nearly identical they may be the work of the
same maker. Another from Kodiak Island (Lowie
Museum 2-6570, Clark 1984:fig. 4) shows more
geometrization of the decorated area, a tendency
seen in some other adaptations of Northwest
Coast design in the region.

Several small boxes, Eskimo-like in construc¬
tion but with surface decoration in modified
form-line style, were collected in the early 19th
century. Some of these may have been made
for sale to collectors. An elaborate example
(National Museum of Finland, 62) fitted with
drawers and perhaps designed as a writing box,
was collected by (and may have been made for)
Arvid Adolf Etholen, chief manager of the Rus¬
sian American Company from 1840 to 1845.
Etholen' s service in Alaska had begun in 1818,
so it is possible that the writing box and several
other similar boxes from his collection (all now
in the National Museum of Finland) were col¬
lected earlier than 1 840. The decoration on these
small boxes varies from generalized and Tlingit-
like patterns to designs that follow many of the
conventions of northern Northwest Coast two-
dimensional art, exemplified by a small chest in
the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography
in Leningrad (fig. 391 ) attributed to the Lisianskii
collection of 1805—06. Although the design on
the long face of this chest appears at first glance

283

to be of Tlingit origin, the resemblance is su¬
perficial, as explained in the analysis of hat
painting below. The designs on the sides of the
chest are nearly identical to those on the wooden
quivers described earlier and can be considered
a typical Pacific Eskimo adaptation of Tlingit art.
Geometric detail, crosshatching, and zigzag and
dentate lines also resemble the details of deco¬
ration on Chugach horn spoons.

Mountain goats, the most important large land
animal in the Chugach economy (Birket-Smith
1953:37), furnished black horns from which the
Pacific Eskimo made spoons very much like those
so well known from the Northwest Coast tribes.
The ready availability of the material and its
special suitability for spoons probably would
have led to their manufacture even without the
influence of Tlingit usage, and their superficial
resemblance to Tlingit spoons probably resulted
as much from the natural (and continentwide)
technology of horn spoon-making as it did from
any attempt to imitate a Northwest Coast model.
The carving of the handles, however, seems to
have been heavily influenced by Tlingit spoons,
with heads of humanoid beings, birds, and even
whole figures sculpted on the tapering, curved
horn (fig. 393). In style, however, they differ
markedly from Northwest Coast carving (figs.
61 and 393 right). The carving on the Pacific
Eskimo examples is angular, with flat, angled
planes often detailed with parallel incised lines.
The invariable large head at the juncture of bowl
and handle is sometimes shown with the upper
lip overhanging the spoon bowl, giving it the
appearance of an enormously broad, extended
tongue. The usual upright ears over this head
are often flared out, an effect achieved by carving
them free of the spoon handle and bending the
steam-softened ears outward.

Unlike the typical Northwest Coast one-piece
goat-horn spoon, the bowl forms a distinct, oval
unit, sharply demarked from the handle, which
extends in a raised, rectangular ridge halfway
down the underside of the bowl. The ridge is
decorated with incising, sometimes in modified
formiine design. The inner surface of the bowl
(or tongue) is always incised with a narrow
median oval flanked by groups of parallel, some¬
times dentate lines and dashes joining it to the
bowl edge. On the more elaborate examples the
median oval is inlaid with white beads or den-
talium shells, inlay material rarely found on
Northwest Coast pieces but common on Eskimo
carvings. Another feature differentiating Pacific
Eskimo spoons from their Tlingit counterparts is
the lack of recurve to the handle, an almost
universal characteristic of Northwest Coast goat-
horn spoons. The three illustrated by Kaj Birket-
Smith (1953:fig. 32) are almost certainly Tlingit

spoons that have made their way through trade
to Prince William Sound.

Living as they were between the grass-twining
Aleut and the spruce-root-twining Tlingit, it
would be surprising if the Chugach and Koniag
women weren't also expert makers of twined
baskets. Spruce root was the available material,
and the twined basketry of the Pacific Eskimo is
almost indistinguishable from that of their east¬
ern neighbors. Given the enormous production
of spruce-root basketry all over southeastern
Alaska, the complexity and elaboration of the
techniques used there, and the importance of

391. Painted Chest
Koniag or Chugach: MAE 2915-la, b
This little chest, Eskimo in construc¬
tion but Tlingit-like in decoration, ap¬
pears to have been broken and re¬
paired. Originally it had been made
with shallow drawers at the bottom
of the ends. Long ago the drawers
were disassembled and the fronts
pegged in place with yew wood pins.
The chest was probably made for
sale, perhaps as a writing box. Pacific
Eskimo variants of Tlingit designs
decorate all four sides.

284

392. Basket

Chugach Eskimo: MAE 4291-7
Tlingit spruce-root basketry has three
broad bands of false embroidery be¬
low the rim, the upper and lower
having the same design. Pacific Es¬
kimo baskets, like this one, have
many narrow bands of alternating de¬
signs.

393. Horn Spoons
Chugach Eskimo: MAE 518-la,b
Haida: NMNH 89167 (detail, right)
Like their Tlingit neighbors, the Chu¬
gach Eskimo made spoons of moun¬
tain goat horn. Unlike the Tlingit, the
Chugach never recurved the handles.
Angled planes, geometric incising,
flaring ears, and parallel chevrons en¬
graved on the bowl are common fea¬
tures of Chugach spoons. White
beads and sections of dentalium
shells are often inlaid into the bowls.
The handle (detail) of the Haida
spoon features a dragonfly holding a
man in its mouth. Though collected
from the Haida in the Queen Char¬
lotte Islands, the treatment is remi¬
niscent of Tlingit work, in which rep¬
resentations of the dragonfly also
occur.

basketry to Tlingit culture, it seems certain that
the Pacific Eskimo twined spruce-root basketry
tradition has its roots in contact with the Tlingit.

Pacific Eskimo spruce-root baskets (fig. 392)
have often been mistaken for Tlingit work. The
techniques and materials used were nearly iden¬
tical, and the general effect of the geometrically
detailed bands of false embroidery in dyed grass
is much alike in the two basketry traditions. Add
to that the confusion resulting from baskets of
Pacific Eskimo type having been collected at
Sitka and the misidentifications are understand¬
able. Molly Lee (1981:66—73) has defined their
characteristics. Repeated bands of false em¬
broidery using a limited vocabulary of design
units (contrasted to the Tlingit style of three
complex bands with the upper and lower alike),
a secondary design field on the lower half
consisting of Aleut-like rows of false embroi¬
dered designs on the twined root background,

and concentric reinforcing rings of three-strand
twining on the base are the most significant
recognition features. The decoration of a unique
bell-mouthed quiver of traditional form but made
of twined spruce-root basketry rather than carved
wood in the Lowie Museum (cat. no. 2-6594a,
b) combines three-strand twining and false em¬
broidery in grass and red and dark blue woolen
yarn, a material use also reminiscent of Aleut
basketry decoration. Although this is the only
Pacific Eskimo basketry quiver known to me,
Lisianskii (1814:181) mentioned their use by the
Koniag in 1805.

It is in the making and decorating of painted
spruce-root hats that the Koniag-Chugach-Tlingit
connection is most graphically displayed. In "A
Man of Prince William's Sound," drawn in 1778
by John Webber, the official artist on Cook's
third expedition, the subject wears a very Eskimo
gutskin parka, nose pin, and peglike labrets, but
on his head is a Northwest Coast— type twined
spruce-root hat decorated with beads and a
painted design in black and red. This was the
first of many 18th- and early- 19th-century de¬
pictions of Chugach and Koniag men wearing
conical hats of Northwest Coast type. Martin
Sauer, in his journal of the Billings Expedition
of 1787—92, illustrated a Koniag man wearing a
spruce-root hat (Sauer 1802: plate 6), and those
hats often appear in early drawings of Pacific
Eskimo men in their baidarkas, and are worn as
well by the crewmen in model skin boats in
early collections. Interestingly, although the evi¬
dence for exclusive male use of spruce-root hats
among the Pacific Eskimo is overwhelming, Lis¬
ianskii wrote of the Koniag in 1805, "Both sexes
wear . . . hats, of the fine roots of trees, platted"
(Lisianskii 1814:1 94). Probably the most detailed
and convincing of the early- 19th-century depic¬
tions are in three watercolor paintings by Mikhail
Tikhanov, an artist who accompanied the Golov¬
nin Expedition around the world in the Kam¬
chatka in 1817—19. One of these depicts two
views of a Koniag man wearing a broad, low,
painted hat (Golovnin 1979:34); a second shows
two hat-wearing hunters (labeled "Aleuts"1),
one with a throwing board and harpoon-dart and
the other with a bow (Golovnin 1979:32); and
the third is a portrait, also labeled "Aleut," with
a detailed representation of a typical Pacific
Eskimo painted hat (USSR Academy of Art,
Tikhanov portfolio, no. 15). All four of these hats
seem surprisingly large and shallow, but a num¬
ber of early hats still in existence resemble them
(figs. 206 and 396). A fine Tlingit hat of nearly
these proportions was collected by Alejandro
Malaspina at Yakutat in 1791 (Weber 1976:fig.
11), and others illustrated by the expedition
artists Jose Cardero and Tomas de Suria are of

285

ftftft1' V:-v •■: .£,* ^ > '

' ■"■■v ■:-v-;v -V:,v ■,

'V Wmm "v' . :

■•■ ftv-'ft- ■-• ft ■ ■' ' :■ ■ •> ': ., \

394. Spruce-Root Crest Hat
Tlingit: NMNH 313279 (upper left)
Woven spruce-root crest hats were
among the triumphs of Tlingit basket
makers. This small hat is one of the
finest. The spruce-root wefts of the
top cylinders were split to less than a
millimeter in width — there are 12
warps and 1 2 rows of twining per
centimeter. Probably dating from the
early historic period, its once rich
painting of black, red (repainted in
vermilion), and blue has faded, and
the darkening root has obscured the
fine formline patterns. Although it is
often said that each cylinder ring rep¬
resented a potlatch given by the
owner, according to some native tra¬
ditions the number of cylinders asso¬
ciated with a crest was fixed long
ago.

286

395. Beaded Spruce-Root Hat
Tlingit: MAE 2520-21 (center left)
Although the painting on this early
hat is classic Tlingit in composition
and detail, it appears to have been
partially repainted in a way that sug¬
gests use by non-Tlingits, perhaps
Pacific Eskimo. Orange-and-white
paint have been applied over some
tertiary areas that would have been
properly painted blue, and white also
appears over two black inner ovoids
and in some background areas. Bead
decorations are also atypical for Tlin¬
git hats. Since no information accom¬
panies the hat which could tell us
more, the assumption must be that
here is a Tlingit piece acquired and
modified by a Chugach or Koniag, be¬
fore its purchase by a Russian collec¬
tor. It is good evidence for intertribal
contact and exchange.

396. Painted Spruce-Root Hat
Tlingit: MAE 2520-14 (lower left)
Very similar in its proportions, weav¬
ing techniques, and arrangement of
painted design to early hats of the
Chugach and Koniag, this hat can be
identified as of Tlingit origin on the
basis of the close adherence of its
painting to the formline design sys¬
tem followed by Tlingit artists. Both
black primary and vermilion second¬
ary formlines show the continuity and
structure of a typical early Northwest
Coast hat design. The principal figure
cannot be positively identified, but in
his wide mouth he holds an animal,
apparently a frog, delineated in red
formlines. A rectangular panel of
painting extending to the front edge
of the hat shows a faint, facelike de¬
sign apparently once overpainted
with blue.

similar form. Two other beautifully woven and
painted hats much like the Malaspina example
in basketry technique, form, and painting style
were also collected early in the historic period.
(They are now in the Anthropological Museum
of the Lomonosov State University, in Moscow,
and the Institute fur Volderkunde der Universi-
tat, in Gottingen.) The painting on all three of
these hats is in classic Tlingit style, although
the hats themselves have basketry details similar
to those of documented Pacific Eskimo baskets.
The close relationship of Koniag and Chugach
painted basketry hats to those of the Tlingit is
obvious even at a casual glance.

Contact-period twined spruce-root hats of the
northern Northwest Coast and the Pacific Eskimo
region share many structural and formal fea¬
tures. They usually have a truncated conical
form with little or no concavity to the slope of
the sides, unlike later 19th-century hats. The
flat top and the sides as far down as the inner
headband were typically woven in three-strand
twining, producing a regular texture similar to
a tight coil of finely plied cord, well suited as a
painting surface. On a few hats from both areas
the flat circular top was elaborated with concen¬
tric rings of alternating single or multiple rows
of two- and three-strand twining. Below the
smooth three-strand section the weavers changed
techniques, twining two weft strands over single
warps, resulting in a radiating texture. This was
elaborated by enclosing two warps at regular
intervals, producing raised lines on the surface
in diagonal, zigzag, or concentric diamond de¬
signs. On some of the finest hats these patterns
were divided by spaced, concentric lines of
three-strand twining.

There is no way to know whether the custom
of painting only the top of the hat determined
the placement of the smoothly twined, three-
strand surface at the top, or vice versa. In any
case, most early hats follow that arrangement.
On Pacific Eskimo hats the painted designs were
clearly derived from Tlingit prototypes. Kaj Bir-
ket-Smith wrote of them, "[That] the elaborate
designs in carving and painting are derived from
Northwest Coast art is so obvious that it needs
no further documentation" (1953:221) (empha¬
sis added). What is not so obvious is just how
the two design traditions differ and in what ways
Pacific Eskimo painters modified the parent style
to suit their own aesthetic.

If a twined spruce-root hat in the form of a
truncated cone and painted with formline-like
designs on the upper, three-strand half is dec¬
orated with bundles of sea lion whiskers, it is
certainly a Chugach or Koniag hat, and if it has
glass beads sewn on the outer surface, the
chances are also very good that it is one. Of the

46 hats examined for this study attributed to
the Pacific Eskimo,2 23 were decorated with
beads and 1 2 of those also with dentalium shells.
Of the 24 old Tlingit-attributed hats examined
(comparable in shape and style of decoration to
the Chugach and Koniag hats) only 3 had bead
decoration (fig. 395). One of those has unusual
painting that may have been redone. A number
of early accounts mention the use of beads on
the basketry hats. David Samwell, with Cook at
Prince William Sound in May of 1778, wrote,
They wear two sorts of Caps, one of which is exactly
like those of George's Sound & variously painted, the
other sort have a kind of Pyramid built on top of them
& are worn only by the Men of the first Consequence
among them; they paint all their Caps with various
figures and some who can afford it have them orna¬
mented with beads of different colors (Cook 1967:1 1 12).
The Cook expedition had come directly from
Nootka (King George's) Sound to Prince William
Sound and had not met any Tlingits, otherwise
Samwell would probably have recognized the
"kind of Pyramid" as the stack of basketry
cylinders topping the hats of high-ranking men.
Among the Tlingit and other northern Northwest
Coast people the number of these cylinders on
a crest hat had specific significance (fig. 394),
whereas it appears that those on the hats of the
"Men of the first Consequence" at Prince William
Sound and Kodiak (fig. 405) had only a general
reference to high status since there was no
developed sense of crests or inherited rank there.
A Chugach-style hat in the British Museum,
apparently collected by Cook (King 198 la: 50 no.
10, 1981b:fig. 11), is surmounted by four large
"potlatch rings," and another (King 1981a:no.
9) has bead decorations of the kind mentioned
by Samwell.

Although the forms of the hats and the ma¬
terial and techniques used in making them are
nearly identical to those of Tlingit hats, the
painted designs on Pacific Eskimo hats show
interesting differences from their Tlingit proto¬
types. Those differences are most apparent if
the design system followed by Tlingit painters
is well understood, and for that reason it would
be useful to briefly review its structure (Holm
1965). This system is a remarkably organized
and logical one, followed closely by artists of
the northern Northwest Coast from some ancient
time long before the historical period and ex¬
tending through the 19th century. After a period
of decline, it was revived in the mid-20th century
and is again widely and closely adhered to by
native artists. The principles of form and struc¬
ture were clearly defined. Designs were repre¬
sentations, often depicting creatures with crest
significance, the display of which was the main
motivation for art production. The system of
design was flexible enough to allow the artists

287

to fit those figures in any given space, to depict
them with varying degrees of naturalism, and
to develop individual styles (Holm 1981).

The basic element of the design system was
the formline (figs. 397 and 398), a broad linelike
figure, most often black in painting, which de¬
lineated the main features of the depicted crea¬
ture. It varied in width according to set principles
and formed design units (most characteristically
the ovoid and the U shape) that had the attributes
of semiangularity and continuity; that is, they
were joined in a continuous network across the
design field. There were a number of ways that
formlines could be merged to avoid abrupt or
awkward junctures. Some of these junctures
were relieved by tapering the joining formline,
and others were broadened at their points of
attachment and relieved by a narrow crescent
or T-shaped opening that defined the edge of
the joined formline. The proper or improper use
of these reliefs and their precise shapes and
positions are clues to the artist's understanding
of the design system. The one exception to the
continuity of formlines is in the free-floating
character of inner ovoids, the eye irises or
centers of joints, which almost never touch their
surrounding formline ovoids.

Joining these black, primary formlines and
filling in many of the remaining spaces were
secondary formlines painted in red. Most of the
spaces still unpainted were developed into ter¬
tiary designs (not formlines) that were outlined
with narrow black, or sometimes red, true lines.
If these outlined spaces were painted, it was in
blue.

Since the designs were representations of
creatures, heads (as well as other body parts
that were often conventionalized as heads) were
almost always shown, and there were a few
standard structures developed for their depic¬
tion. Most easily recognized is a rather natur¬
alistic face, either full-face or profile, with a
mouth with teeth, nostrils, small round eyes
with eyelids, and eyebrows. This form of face
seldom represents the head of the depicted
animal but typically was used for joints or
sometimes the trunk of the animal. It frequently
appears on both Tlingit and Pacific Eskimo hat
paintings and never as the principal head. The
usual way of representing the head of the
depicted creature was with a large formline
design that with few exceptions takes one of
two structural arrangements. The simpler of the
two, and the most common on hat paintings,
can be called the one-step structure (Holm
1965:fig. 36) (figs. 395—397). The one-step struc¬
ture can be used for a profile face, but on hats
the main creature's head is always bilaterally
symmetrical. A peculiarity of paintings on early

hats (and on some other objects) is that the
lower edge of the three-strand twining (de¬
signed) section acts as the lower formline of the
face, which is omitted from the painting itself.
The primary formline representing the outer rim
of the head begins at this edge. It runs upward
and then turns, in a semiangular bend, toward
the upper front of the hat, forming the upper
edge of the head or forehead in a gentle arch.
At the inner edge of the eye socket it turns
downward, again with a semiangular bend, until
it reaches the upper lip. It then turns outward,
with a somewhat more angular bend, and con¬
tinues nearly parallel with the forehead formline
until it reaches the end of the mouth, where it
turns downward and joins the lower edge of the
design. This is usually a tapered juncture and

forms the corner of the mouth. The term "one-
step” chosen for this structure refers to this
single "step" from the corner of the mouth to
the eye socket. The second side of the face is a
mirror image of the first. A space is left between
the two eyes at the front of the hat, and they
are joined by a formline that is a continuation
of the upper line of the mouth. It may make
either straight, tapered junctures with the eye
ovoids, or swelling junctures with appropriate
reliefs. In any case, the eye ovoid formline is
the proper joined formline, while the bridging
formline is the joining one.

Joining the formlines of the upper lip and
outer edges of the face are red secondary designs
that form the cheeks, completing the ovoids of
the eye sockets. Within those sockets float the
eyes, often elaborated inner ovoids, surrounded
by tertiary lines. The space between the tertiary
eyelid line and the surrounding formlines is a
tertiary area and, if painted, is blue. Within the
mouth are more formline designs, usually in
secondary red, although sometimes a primary
black snout or incisors appear in the center (fig.
396). The space between the eyes is also elab¬
orated with secondary designs and may be
bridged by a primary formline at the top.

397. Diagram of One-Step
Structure

288

398. Diagram of Two-Step
Structure

A somewhat less common and more elaborate
arrangement of the facial parts is sometimes
seen (figs. 398, 399), which can be called a two-
step structure (Holm 1965:fig. 38). In this var¬
iant, the formline of the forehead dips sharply
between the eyes and continues across the top
of the head. A separate formline defines the
upper lip, and another formline complex depicts
two long nostrils and the bridge of the nose.
The nostrils form the second "step” between
the corners of the mouth and the eye sockets.
These sockets are longer and narrower than
those in the one-step form, and they are usually
much more angular. Generally the eyes in a
two-step face are surrounded by a tertiary line
with extended, eyelidlike points. Long cheek
designs extend over the top of the upper lip to
join the corners of the nostrils, and the inside
of the mouth is often elaborated with teeth and
a red, secondary tongue.

These large head designs spread at least
halfway around the hat. The remaining space is
devoted to the rest of the creature in highly
abstracted form (fig. 400). A typical arrangement
includes a pair of large ears, represented by
horizontal formline U's, attached to the outer
edges of the head. The upper leg of each U is
joined to the forehead formlines along the top

rim of the hat, and the lower legs join the head
at or near its outer corners. At the back of the
hat are usually placed a pair of formline ovoids
with their enclosed inner ovoids, representing
joints, probably of the pelvis of the represented
creature. Extending forward from these joints
and filling the spaces between the U-form ears
and the lower edge of the painting are U com¬
plexes representing feathers or fins, or feet with
extended claws. The majority of hat paintings
follow some variation on this composition. The
differences come in the way the rear ovoids are
joined and in the elaborations of the secondary
spaces. Some of these differences have to do
with the meaning of the design; others are the
result of the individual artist's choices.

Painted spruce-root hats of the Chugach and
Koniag were seen, described, pictured, and col¬
lected by many of the earliest European explor¬
ers of the North Pacific. In 1805 Lisianskii noted
that "on the upper part of these hats some
whimsical figures are generally painted” (Lis¬
ianskii 1814:194). Although it is typical of early
commentators to write condescendingly of the
unfamiliar cultures with which they came in
contact, and to misjudge the meaning of objects,
Lisianskii' s characterization of Koniag hat paint¬
ing as whimsical may not have been too far off
the mark. Certainly the designs on Pacific Eskimo
hats were derived from Tlingit models without
any of the burden of crest significance. There is
no direct evidence that any Koniag or Chugach
man could not have such a painted hat. Sam-
well's comments of 1778 suggest only that hat
rings denoted a man of "first Consequence” and
that bead decorations were limited to those who
could afford them.

Little sense can be made of the documentation
for these existing painted hats in determining
any pattern of styles in relation to age or source.
Many hats that are clearly Pacific Eskimo in style
have been labeled Tlingit, often by a later
cataloger. Hardly any have original collection
information to indicate whether they came from
Kodiak or Prince William Sound.3 Because of the
many ambiguities in the record, for the purposes
of this study I have identified hat paintings as
Tlingit or Pacific Eskimo according to their ad¬
herence or lack of adherence to the formline
system4 and have not differentiated between
Chugach and Koniag examples. Neither am I
going to try to relate dates to changes in style
over the century from Cook in 1778 to William
Fisher in 1884, during which these hats were
collected. The three hats in this study believed
to have been collected on the Cook expedition
in 1778 exhibit a range of styles as great as can
be seen in the whole collection.

Some of the Pacific Eskimo hat designs are so
much changed from their Tlingit prototype that
only a vestige of face structure remains to tell
of their origins. On the other hand, a number of
hat paintings are so like Northwest Coast designs
that it takes careful examination to be sure that
they are not. A beautiful hat with elaborately
false-embroidered, hair-fringed top cylinders in
the Etholen collection (fig. 401; National Museum
of Finland 45c; Collins et al. 1973:no. 253) is a
good example. The formlines have the same
continuity and semiangularity of Tlingit work,
the facelike elaboration of the eye is nearly
correct, and the red secondary designs are
convincing at first glance. A second look reveals
many discrepancies. Many of the secondary
designs are outlined in black, and all of them,

289

399. Carved Chest
Tlingit: FM 78703
This long, low chest covered with
formlines beautifully executed in low
relief was once painted, but long use
and wear have darkened it until none
of the original colors are visible. The
old style of the heavy, angular form¬
lines corroborates its age. Standard,
symmetrical chest compositions fill
the front and back sides, while asym¬
metrical figures were used on the
ends. Later chests were seldom
carved on the ends, but were painted
only. Although the maker of this
chest strictly followed the rules of the
formline tradition, the arrangement
of the formlines, especially on the
end designs, is unique.

including the cheek, float; that is, they do not
join the primary formlines at their corners. Many
formline junctures are unrelieved by tapering or
relief slits. The structure of the eye ovoid is not
according to formline principles, and the outline
of the secondary U between the eyes merges
with the formline bridge at the top. All of these
details are unlike classic Tlingit formline design,
and their occurrence on a hat with Pacific Eskimo
techniques of basketry elaboration clinches the
identification. Another equally beautiful hat, in
the Turku (Finland) Historical Museum (cat. no.
82 [255]), collected in the 1850s, is almost
identical in style and detail. Almost certainly by
the same painter, it is decorated with dentalium
shells and glass beads in Pacific Eskimo style.

Many Pacific Eskimo hats follow the basic
composition of the one-step structure but vary
the forms and details so much that they are
easily distinguishable from their Tlingit coun¬
terparts. An example is a hat in the Museum of
Anthropology and Ethnography (fig. 402). The
primary formline outlines the upper part of the
eye socket but joins the lip rather than continuing
under the eye (a common Pacific Eskimo variant).
The upper lip formline parallels the lower edge
of the design rather than the upper formline. It
then angles sharply down instead of following
the semiangular form of the prototype. There is
a red, secondary cheek design that repeats the
angle of the lip, giving the eye socket an unusual,
angular bottom. Three circles connected by a
horizontal line in the eye is a very Eskimo,
geometric suggestion of the formline detail of
the Northwest Coast elaborated inner ovoid. A
humanoid face fills the rear joint area, like many
Tlingit hats in concept but unlike them in style.
Geometrization of the claws, limbs, and U forms
are further indicators of Pacific Eskimo origin.

400. Diagram of Tlingit Hat
Fm 53024-1

401. Diagram of Pacific Eskimo Hat
National Museum of Finland 45c

290

402. Painted Spruce-Root Hat
Chugach?: MAE 2520-16
Broad conical hats, expertly woven of
split spruce-root, were among the
Northwest Coast culture features
adopted by the Pacific Eskimos some¬
time before the arrival of Europeans
on the coast. Many, like this one,
show their Northwest Coast heritage
clearly in the painted designs on the
crown. But even though the artist
kept close to traditional Tlingit ar¬
rangement and color use (black-and-
red formlines with blue tertiary
areas), the formline shapes and junc¬
tures are recognizably different from
those in Tlingit painting. They have
become adapted to the Pacific Eskimo
aesthetic and are beautiful in their
own right.

403. Diagram of Pacific Eskimo Hat
MAE 536-12

404. Diagram of Eskimo Hat
Koniag? MAE 5795-23

Another fine Pacific Eskimo hat illustrates
another version of the one-step composition (fig.
206). The formlines are very angular, with a
right-angle juncture at the lip relieved by a
small, square gap. The ear formlines are rounded
with sudden tapers at their points of joining the
head. The lower juncture strikes the corner of
the eye ovoid, rather than turning and fairing
into its side according to formline conventions.
Many Pacific Eskimo hat paintings use an eye
and eyelid like this one, with a small, narrow
iris and long, constricted eyelid points reaching
to the edge of the socket. The tertiary split U in
the ear is open and angular. Although the clawed
foot is similar to the Tlingit form, the lack of an
attached limb and the red paint between the
claws is another indication of its nonconformity.
And finally, the ovoid complex at the rear of the
hat has become completely geometric — a pair
of black-bordered rectangles separated by a
crosshatched space and flanked by small rectan¬
gular projections.

The hat worn by Webber's "Man of Prince
William's Sound'' in 1778 has a peculiar design
on the front. It is much like the back of this hat.
I'm convinced that Webber has drawn the back
rather than the front. Perhaps his sketch was
finished in his cabin onboard the Discovery, with
the hat, newly purchased for a few blue beads,
on the table before him — backwards.5 Webber's
drawing is even more like the back of another
hat in Leningrad (fig. 403). The design has
become even more geometric. The formline has
been reduced to an arc looping over the eye,
joining a long, toothed mouth. The secondary
cheek designs have disappeared. The claws are
reversed and have become multiple, narrow
chevrons. The ovoid joints in the back are now
floating, narrow rectangles lined with a row of

291

405. Painted Spruce-Root Hat

Chugach: MAE 593-34 (above)

A column of woven spruce-root cylin¬
ders topping a conical hat was a pre¬
rogative of rank among northern
Northwest Coast people. The Chu¬
gach and Koniag recognized this and
incorporated the emblem on their
own hats, which were painted in imi¬
tation of Tlingit designs. The Chu¬
gach weavers sometimes added false
embroidery on the cylinders, a detail
rarely if ever seen on Tlingit hats.

292

406. Decorated Spruce-Root Hat
Koniag: NMNH 74720 (left)

Koniag spruce-root hats of the 19th
century often carried a spectacular
array of beads, dentalia, and sea lion
whiskers, arranged in symmetrical
patterns right over, and seemingly
without regard to, the painted de¬
signs on the crown. The spruce root
and whiskers were local products, the
beads and probably the shells were
acquired in trade. Dentalia grew here
and there off the coast, but the best-
known fisheries were on the west
coast of Vancouver Island. Nootka
and west coast Kwakiutl harvested
the shells and sold them to traders,
who spread them over western North
America. No doubt many were traded
intertribally before the Euro-Ameri¬
can fur trade, and they were highly
prized everywhere.

407. Diagram of Pacific Eskimo

Spruce-Root Hat

Pacific Eskimo: MAE 344-73

dots. And the stripe up the back has lost all
semblance of a Northwest Coast formline design.

A group of hats all heavily decorated with
beads, dentalia, and bundles of sea lion whiskers
share design characteristics that are even further
removed from their formline roots but that still
can be traced back to them (fig. 404). Although
a hat in the U.S. National Museum of Natural
History (fig. 406) was collected in 1884 on Kodiak
Island, it is nearly identical with others collected
much earlier. Most of these hats are, or were,
painted entirely blue, with the design over¬
painted in red and black. The formlines have
become very narrow and open and have lost
nearly all continuity. Long eyelids — black, red-
bordered lines opening to tiny, diamond eyes in
their centers, a frequent convention in Eskimo
art — reach from the lower border to the abrupt
inner ends of the eye sockets. In the mouth two
short bars, each with three upright projections,
suggest teeth. Ears form long, split loops, and
the claws have become tiny, geometric vestiges.
The rear joints are now pairs of rectangles over
flat bars with upright, round-headed knobs. The
spidery, meandering paintings of this group of
hats are overwhelmed by their spectacular clus¬
ters of dentalium shells and beads and the thrust
of the flanking sprays of sea lion whiskers.

A group of 13 hats using the two-step config¬
uration is very uniform in detail. Many of them
are decorated with beads and a few with den¬
talium shells and whiskers. Three of them have
top cylinders, and two of those are elaborated
with false embroidery. Five of them have four
painted panels extending to the outer rim of the
hat. Classic formline two-step designs tend to

be somewhat angular, and these all share that
characteristic. They all have the separate mouth
and nostril formlines (with resulting long, an¬
gular cheek designs) typical of two-step struc¬
tures. Large, angular U-shaped ears extend back
from the head. At the rear of the hat, complexes
of formline ovoids and U forms fill the space,
extending out under the ears in the form of
feathers or claws. Human faces fill the space
between the ends of the ears on six of these
hats (figs. 405, 407). The eyes on eight of the
hats resemble elaborated formline inner ovoids,
the rest are decorated with two or three ovals
in a row. An interesting hat in the U.S. National
Museum originally was painted with a standard
Pacific Eskimo version of the two-step structure
and was later overpainted with a design typical
of hats decorated with dentalia, beads, and sea
lion whiskers (figs. 404 and 406). Unfortunately
this hat has no documentation, so all we know
is that on this particular hat the one style
preceded the other.

At the end of the 18th century, when the first
of these hats were noted and collected, the
Pacific Eskimo were already in the grip of a
powerful acculturative force. Russian fur hunters
dominated them and their Aleut neighbors, and
the continuing development of their distinctive
way of life was diverted. The assimilation of a
foreign style of hat and its decoration was in
progress just at the time when native lifestyle
and art production were about to disappear.
Fortunately a good number of examples of this
interesting product of diffusion were collected
and preserved in the museums of the world.

408. Woven Spruce-Root Hat
Chugach: MAE 633-18 (left)

Most Pacific Eskimo spruce-root hats
are painted with Tlingit like designs.
A few incorporate grass false embroi¬
dery (fig. 405). This elegant and
unique hat uses false embroidery
decoration, in patterns like those
seen on Pacific Eskimo baskets. Paint¬
ing in dark red and blue sets off the
grass embroidery, now nearly a uni-
from gold but probably once dyed in
bands of color.

293

Comparative Art of the North Pacific Rim

William W. Fitzhugh

"There is in New York a magic place where all the
dreams of childhood hold a rendezvous, where century
old tree trunks sing or speak, where indefinable
objects lie in wait for the visitor with an anxious stare;
where animals of superhuman gentleness press their
uplifted little paws, clasped in prayer for the privilege
of constructing for the chosen one the palace of the
beaver, of guiding him into the realm of the seals, or
of teaching him, with a mystic kiss, the language of
the frog and kingfisher'' (Levi-Strauss 1943:175).

For more than 50 years the native arts of the
Northwest Coast and Alaska have been recog¬
nized as being among the finest in the Americas.
Originally seen at the Philadelphia Centennial
Exposition of 1876 as "repellant curiosities”
(Cole 1985:30), its obscure, fantastic forms and
primal energy remained unappreciated by most
Western viewers until the 1940s when it was
discovered by the Surrealists (Cowling 1978).
Today, following a generation of "primitive" art
exhibitions, native arts are increasingly seen in
the context of the cultures that produced them.
While the arts of the Northwest Coast and North
Pacific— Bering Sea region typically have been
studied from a regional or local (ethnographic)
perspective, few studies address the problem of
broader comparative analysis. This study is a
preliminary attempt to reveal patterns, relation¬
ships, and historical processes in the arts of
North Pacific peoples.

Early anthropologists believed that high-qual¬
ity art resulted from settled agricultural life,
market economy, craft specialization, and cen¬
tralized political control. Somehow, Caucasians
could imagine exceptions in the European Pa¬
leolithic but not among peoples of the Far North.
Yet the discoverers of North Pacific peoples
found the inhabitants of the foggy, windswept,
often icebound North Pacific and Bering Sea

coasts in possession of elaborate works of art.
Apparently, productive maritime economies of¬
fered alternative routes to aesthetic excellence,
even under harsh environmental conditions.

Geographically, the artistic panorama of the
North Pacific consists of two distinct groups, one
American and the other Siberian. Only in the
cases of Asian and Inupiat Eskimo, who share
opposite sides of Bering Strait, and the Eskimo-
influenced Maritime Chukchi is there evidence
of significant overlap. Quintessential^ Ameri¬
can, the great carved memorial (totem) posts of
the Haida, the elaborate winter ceremonial masks
of the Kwakiutl, the elegant formline art of the
Tlingit, and the less well known but equally
artistic clothing, carved ivory, and ceremonial
arts of the Aleut, Athapaskan, and Eskimo peo¬
ples have added immeasurably to the world's
great art traditions. Less well known to North
Americans are the works of Northeastern Sibe¬
rian peoples: the formal elegance of Amur fish-
skin clothing, the embroidered and beaded cos¬
tumes of Even shamans, the stunning design of
Koryak funeral coats, and the sculptural work of
Koryak and Chukchi ivcry carvers. Though less
elaborate than Native American arts, North¬
eastern Siberian art represents a large and
cohesive body of material. Yet, despite two
centuries of collecting, exhibition, and publica-

409. Ceremonial Raven Pipe

Tlingit: NMNH 337354
This pipe, carved as mythical Raven
in partly human form, is monumental
in concept but only eight centimeters
high. Animal ears top his head, but
human ears and tiny feet show him
in a state of transformation. He
grasps a human head with raven's
claws. His formline wing and tail
carvings cover him like a painted
robe. Few objects epitomize the cere¬
monial, social, and aesthetic concepts
of Tlingit art as well as this.

294

410. Sea Lion War Helmet
Tlingit: MAE 2454-15
Animal-based art, characteristic of
hunting cultures, was a dominant
theme on the Northwest Coast and in
Alaska. Tlingit artists carved many
animals on war helmets, but perhaps
the most common was the bull sea
lion. Among the largest, strongest
and most aggressive mammals en¬
countered by the Tlingit, the Steller
sea lion was a fitting subject for war¬
rior's regalia. The bull's habitual
pose, head thrust upward, roaring,
lent itself to helmet art. Real sea lion
teeth and whiskers, sweeping back
from the nostrils, gave added real¬
ism.

411. Ritual Hunting Helmet
Alaska Peninsula?: MAE 2868-40
The blending of artistic traditions
that often occurs at the boundaries
between cultures is clearly seen in
this hunting helmet. In basic form
the hat is Aleut: shape, construction,
ivory side volutes, rear plaque, Thun-
derbird crest carving, beaded sea lion
whiskers, and multicolor horizontal
banding (cf. fig. 204). However, a
Koniag or Bering Sea Eskimo origin
is likely for its detailed pictographic
panels of Thunderbird mythology and
linear narratives of hunting expedi¬
tions.

412. Killer Whale Fish Club
Tlingit: NMNH 224419
Clubs of hardwood, sometimes elabo¬
rately carved as animals or spirit al¬
lies, were used to kill halibut and
salmon. Seals and sea otters were

tion, the arts of the greater Beringian region
have never been viewed within a single com¬
parative perspective.

On one level, the reasons for this neglect are
understandable. The arts of the North Pacific
are heterogeneous, and the effects of different
histories, environments, and beliefs on the tra¬
ditions of Asian and American cultures are
evident. Unquestionably, there are more simi¬
larities within Asian and American groups than
between them. There are also more similarities
between Asia and America in prehistoric times
than in the 19th century. But at a deeper level,
both regions share structures, themes, and ar¬
tistic patterns that betray common heritage.

Within Siberian and American regional tradi¬
tions, the function of art varied according to
economic and social conditions. Four basic types
are found in the North Pacific. Hunting art is
most widely known from the European Paleo¬
lithic but among ethnographic peoples is ex¬
emplified best by 19th-century Native Alaskan
art. In hunting art, images of game and weapons,

killed the same way. Very often these
carvings took the form of predators
like sea lions or killer whales — ani¬
mals that feed on salmon and seals.

helping spirits, and animal controllers were used
to influence, and sometimes to help overcome,
animal spirits; in itself, a man's own powers
were considered weak and ineffectual. South of
the Bering Sea, where communal exploitation of
the large, relatively stable fish resources re¬
placed the hunting of marine mammals, different
religious views and artistic representations were
found. Here, art was used primarily to com¬
municate social values through heraldic crests
and insignia. Although art functioned also as
hunting magic on the Northwest Coast, its pri¬
mary role was in expressing social rank, social
(totemic) organization, and rights of possession.
In Siberia these types of religious and ceremonial
art were less important than in America. Siberian
art was primarily directed at the design and
decoration of clothing. In this regard, it inter¬
sected a fourth function common to both regions,
as an indication of ethnicity or group member¬
ship in ethnic styles of clothing, headgear, and
artifact decoration.

The role of history is everywhere apparent in
North Pacific art. In medieval Europe, hunting
art lingered on the periphery of Western civili¬
zation in Celtic and early Norse art, but otherwise
one must revert to paleolithic times in Europe
to find common ground with artistic traditions
of 18th- and 19th-century North Pacific societies.
This is what stunned the Surrealists.

But even in the remote North Pacific, historical
processes modified ancient artistic patterns. This
did not begin with Vitus Bering or James Cook —
although it was accelerated by European con¬
tacts — nor was it geographically symmetrical.
In northwestern North America, hunting art was

295

still dominant everywhere at the time of discov¬
ery, as the collections in this exhibition attest.
Archeological data indicate its former presence
in Siberia, but by the time of the first historical
accounts in the 16th century, few traces re¬
mained. This process had begun at least 2,000
years ago when reindeer pastoralism and tech¬
nological developments (especially metalwork¬
ing) and their economic and social consequences
began to transform Siberian hunting cultures
into more specialized, production-oriented (as
opposed to subsistence-oriented) societies. The
economic and religious basis for hunting art was
incompatible with the ascendant philosophy of
human manipulation of the natural world. These
changes were manifested in Siberian art by
reduction of animal-based themes and increased
use of strictly anthropomorphic forms (see Serov,
p. 245 in this volume). In North America, where
Siberian production economies never gained a
foothold, ancient masking traditions and animal-
based hunting art prevailed.

Apart from these larger historical patterns,
native cultures of the North Pacific developed
and changed partly according to their own dy¬
namics and partly in relation to cultures, peoples,
and events around them. They created distinc¬
tive cultural and regional styles, shared artistic
themes, and interpreted their religions and social
beliefs in a multitude of artistic forms.

413. Embossed Birchhark Tray
Nivkhi (Gilyak): AMNH 70-876
This tray epitomizes Nivkhi band de¬
sign, cryptic zoomorphism, and inter¬
play between positive and negative
fields.

414. Woman's Embroidered Fishskim
Robe

Nanai: MAE 313-18/7

415. Embroidered Fishskin Boots
Nanai: AMNH 70-621a,b

416. Woman's Embroidered Mittens

Nanai: AMNH 7O-620a,b

296

417. Tasseled Shaman's Coat
Yukaghir: AMNH 705620a
Bird features of this shaman's coat
include a winglike shoulder band and
"light world" crosses (birds); also
seen are "dark world" spirits and an
adapted Orthodox cross as a verte¬
bral element.

Siberian Cultures

The Lower Amur

Peoples of the Lower Amur, like those of the
Northwest Coast, created one of the most dis¬
tinctive art styles of the region (Laufer 1975;
Okladnikov 1981; Shrenk 1883-1903; Schurtz
1896). Fishskin garments, wood utensils and
bowls, birchbark vessels, harpoon heads, fishing
equipment, and metalwork were decorated with
designs based on interlocking bands and spirals,
sometimes hiding beastly animal faces similar
to those known as t'ao-t'ieh images on ancient
Chinese sculptures. Bilteral symmetry and use
of "split” design was common. Symmetry, and
the use of negative fields (also shared by the
Ainu), and motifs like roosters, fish, and dragons
also occurred in Chinese art (figs. 21, 413, and
414; Laufer 1975). Amur-style decoration im¬
parted a distinctive stamp to nearly all items of
material culture. Embellishment of even the
smallest items, like needlecases (fig. 273), was
de rigueur.

Even

Differences in culture, history and language
between Amur groups and their northern neigh¬
bors were expressed also in artistic traditions.
Even ethnic style was seen primarily in clothing;
other material culture was relatively unelabor¬
ate. Even clothing decoration was rectilinear and
decorative rather than, as among the Amur
groups, curvilinear, cryptic, and animal-based.
Open coats, aprons, and boots displayed such
patterns as linear and zigzag patterns of brightly
contrasting glass beads; welted seams of light
and dark skin; linear bands of alternating light
and dark panels created by weaving light-colored
skin through slits in a dark skin base; rectangular
panels of decorated skin; and framing of clothing
borders by bead, welted seam, fringe, and fur
trim (figs. 270 and 418). Shamans' clothing,
often acquired from Evenk or Yukaghir shamans,
who were considered more powerful, was dec¬
orated with emblematic human forms, amulets,
fur tassels, and various power insignia, including
syncretic adaptations of the Orthodox cross (fig.
417). Dyed moose hair or reindeer hair embroi¬
dery (occurring also in North America; Turner
1976), in rectilinear patterns, was applied to
coats, hats, mitts, and gloves, sometimes in
skeletal patterns (fig. 295). Even clothing and
jewelry styles closely resembled those of the
Evenk because of close historical ties.

418. Decorated Cradle Back

Yukaghir: AMNH 70-5200

419. Embroidered and Beaded Pouch

Even: MAE 1799-1

297

Koryak

Koryak ethnic arts (Jochelson 1975:646-732)
were somewhat similar to those of the Even and
Evenk, probably because of influence from these
groups, but Koryak styles also displayed features
derived from Itelmen, Amur, Russian, and local
sources. Koryak knives and weapons carried the
curvilinear designs of Amur metalsmiths. Simi¬
larly, equipment used in reindeer transportation,
a technology borrowed from the Even, was
decorated with beaded designs familiar to those
interior Siberian groups (fig. 232). Despite this
evidence of regional craft specialization, Koryak
iron jewelry, which was produced from metal
traded from Amur sources through the Evenk,
featured whaletail imagery.

As with other Siberian groups, it was in their
clothing that the most distinctive features of
Koryak ethnicity was noted. Emphasizing bold,
contrasting forms enhanced by light-dark con¬
trasts, Koryak seamstresses produced striking
garments for everyday, festival, and funeral use
(figs. 29 and 278); their designs contrasted dark
and light geometric patterning in fur applique
that was offset, occasionally, by equally striking
asymmetry (fig. 293) and included fringes and

beaded tassels (fig. 421). Parka hem friezes of
quilted reindeer fur and of multicolor embroi¬
dered silk were especially distinctive. Skin gar¬
ments were decorated with stamped geometric
designs made with woodcut blocks that, like
floral patterns (fig. 293), seem to have been
stimulated by designs on Russian calico.

Animal and human subjects were represented
in both sacred and secular art. Whale imagery
was used in jewelry and in ritual vessels used
in the Whale Festival. Anthropomorphic stick-
figure charms ("masters'') — dressed and masked
in grass — took the same form as masters among
other Northeastern Siberian groups. Particularly
striking was the elaboration of these designs in
ceremonial art, as on Evenk shaman costumes,
and in old ritual designs, sometimes disguised,
like those on Koryak quivers and on "masters”
of nets (figs. 182 and 227). Koryak art also
included freestanding ivory and wood sculpture
depicting animals and people engaged in every¬
day activities, used both for toys and for sale to
outsiders (fig. 420). Coiled baskets with designs
similar to late- 19th-century Alaskan types were
also produced.

420. Wrestling Bears
Koryak: MAE 441-37/2
Jochelson (1908:646-68) commented
on the high quality of Maritime Ko¬
ryak ivory and bone carving, which
he likened to Magdelenian art and to
Alaskan Eskimo and Chukchi art. He
contrasted it with the lack of carved
art among the Yakut, Evenk, and
Even, noting that even the Reindeer
Koryak produced little in the way of
realistic carvings. Jochelson attrib¬
uted this to the lack of permanent
winter settlement and the require¬
ments of nomadic life. Similar differ¬
ences in art exist between sedentary
coastal and nomadic interior hunting
peoples of northwestern North Amer¬
ica.

These wrestling bears, a subject
commonly portrayed in Koryak and
Chukchi carving, reflect market de¬
velopments. In producing illustrative,
freestanding art severed from its pre¬
vious religious and technological
functions, Koryak carvers drew on
traditional themes and skills to pro¬
duce works that pleased whalers,
traders, and scientists. Similar
changes occurred, for similar reasons,
in Alaskan Eskimo art after the whal¬
ing era began in 1848.

421. Siberian Design Sampler
(top to bottom) Koryak: MAE 956-54;
Chukchi: MAE 1791-174; Kamchadal:
AMNH 70-2203; Koryak: MAE 1059-
85

This set of Siberian designs begins
with a slit-embroidered man's funeral
belt (top) of white dog skin against
dark hide, creating rhythmic color
contrasts. Chukchi created a similar
effect in a belt using dyed applique
against bleached sealskin. Plant orna¬
mentation, seen in the embroidered
Kamchadal belt, was not native to Si¬
beria, but was stimulated by designs
on Russian calico. Floral designs also
spread around the world in the other
direction, reaching Siberia from the
east (fig. 323). Both geometric and
floral designs were used in the elabo¬
rate applique and colored silk em¬
broidery on Koryak dance and funeral
coats.

298

Siberian Overview

422. Winter Boots
Asian Eskimo: AMNH 60-3552a,b
These Asian Eskimo winter boots
have tasseled uppers like Alaskan
boots, but the foot construction is a
strictly Siberian style. Soles are
crimped out rather than in, as in Es¬
kimo fashion: toes are square; and
the boot has a high, loose vamp of
curried leather that provided room
for grass insoles. This pair is embroi¬
dered with spurred line and barred
circle motifs, executed in colored
wool.

423. Pouch Design

Asiatic Eskimo: AMNH 60-3678

(left); Koryak: 70-1951 (right)

These St. Lawrence Island Eskimo
and Koryak bags display similar pat¬
terns even though based on different
traditional design systems. The larger
bag uses bleached sealskin applique
of doubled pendant "U" and bar mo¬
tifs and an arcing toothed mouth de¬
sign to create the face of a stylized
beast. Rows of similar pendant "U"
forms embroidered in white reindeer
hair create a fishscale pattern in the
tasseled Koryak bag.

Chukchi

Proceeding toward Bering Strait, a trend of de¬
clining artistic production was evident in the
19th century. The inhabitants of this region
were not noted for their art but for trade, war,
and independence. Among Reindeer Chukchi,
the requirements of reindeer nomadism were
not conducive to artistic production, especially
for the men; consequently, their utensils, tools,
and ivory carvings were simple and unelabor¬
ated. (Later, in the 20th century a skilled en¬
graving art developed among the Maritime Chuk¬
chi; fig. 327.) The finest artworks were those of
Chukchi women, who excelled at needlework,
producing bold and elegant applique designs on
skin bags and finely embroidered boots, mitts,
quivers, and emblematic plaques on hide shields.
These designs included interlocked circles, dou¬
bled and spurred lines reminiscent of ancient
Old Bering Sea and Punuk art (pp. 121-29), and
appended U forms with interlocked semicircular
and arch (sometimes toothed) motifs (figs. 38,
40, 227, and 297).

Men's art was largely figurative. Complex
painted illustrations representing cosmological
concepts appeared on ritual paddles (fig. 344),
but most common were simple illustrations,
sometimes using perspective, depicting spirits,
myths, animals, hunting scenes, and encounters
with other people, including Westerners (fig.
443). The most elaborate creation of this type
is a sealskin hide painting illustrating Chukchi
life, environment, and history (fig. 444).

Except when used as pictographic art on wood
and ivory, as effigy figures on the clothing of
shamans, as simple leather and wooden masks,
and as zoomorphic forms of ritual containers,
humans and animals appeared infrequently in
the art of Northeastern Siberians and rarely
were presented in abstracted rendition. The
exception to this pattern was in the Amur region,
where zoomorphic representation, often in
"cryptic" form, was common. Here, masked
beasts, semihuman faces, and even simple forms
like roosters, fish, and dragons appear and dis¬
appear from the tracery of lines alternating
between positive and negative fields. Artisans
of the Amur abhorred blank surfaces and filled
them with complex curvilinear designs and cryp¬
tic imagery reminiscent of ancient art styles of
the northern steppes, China, and the Bering Sea.

Elsewhere in Northeastern Siberia, an entirely
different type of art predominated. Among the
Even, Evenk, Koryak, and Chukchi, the most
elaborate form of artistic expression was a rigidly
geometric decorative style of fine beadwork,
embroidery, and piecework patterning in cloth¬
ing. The dominance of this Northeast Siberia
geometric style, flanked to the south by a highly
ornamental animal-style tradition, raises ques¬
tions of its origins and history. The geometric
style had more affinities with northern Eurasian
art than with southern Siberian and Asiatic
forms. One wonders what became of Scytho-
Siberian art, once distributed from southern
Siberia to Bering Strait (see below). The replace¬
ment (except in figurative shamanistic art) of
the early Eurasian animal-type cryptic art by a
largely decorative geometric art north of the
Amur marks a major cultural change in eastern
Siberia.

These general remarks also note the weak
development of masking in Northeast Siberian
traditions (cf. Ivanov and Stukalov 1975). The
Chukchi did not use masks. The Asian Eskimo
used simple masks to depict Kasak, Master of
the Sea Animals, in annual ceremonies. Else¬
where, the Koryak (including Aliutor and Kerek),
Even, Evenk, and Yukaghir used simple hoodlike
leather masks in masquerades to scare children
and to cover the face of the deceased in funeral
rites; Yukaghir men used masks when dissecting
the corpses of shamans. Grass masks were worn
by the Koryak in the Whale Festival (fig. 346).
Few of these Asian masks were named beings
(Great Raven being one). In this part of Asia,
wood masks were used only by the Koryak and
were of simple construction, depicting gaunt¬
faced men with straw, fur, or patches of black
paint to indicate facial hair (fig. 424). Animal
masks or masks of semihuman beings, so widely

299

used in North America, were not known. Wal-
demar Jochelson noted the reduced importance
of masking in Northeastern Siberia as compared
with northwestern America and saw Koryak
masks as most similar to masks from Barrow,
Alaska (fig. 425).

In Siberia, mask distribution was spotty, social
support for masking was weak or even banned,
and the art of masking was of poor guality. The
impression created by this general pattern is of
a dying tradition, once more widespread, only
remnants of which survived into the 19th cen¬
tury. This contrasts strongly with the highly
visible and dynamic masking traditions of Amer¬
ica and of eastern and southeastern Asia.

Finally, the weak masking complex and lack
of animal and human forms in general contrasts
with the widespread use of stylized human
representations in religious contexts. Stylized
anthropomorphic designs were used on sha¬
mans' clothing (fig. 417) and as schematic stick-
figure masters throughout Northeastern Siberia.
Taking human rather than animal or semihuman
form as in America, these masters reflect changes
in Siberian beliefs from a worldview in which
men were dominated by animal spirits and
semihuman controlling deities to one in which
men exerted significant influence over their
destiny. Sacrifice of dogs (fig. 342), bears, and
reindeer was one manifestation of this change;
depicting gods in human form was another.

424. Siberian Wood and Leather
Masks

Koryak: AMNH 70-3938 (left), 70-
3130(right); Chukchi: AMNH 70-
6325 (upper)

Grass masks and wood masks were
used among the Maritime Koryak, the
former in the Whale Festival (fig.
346), and the latter in a Masquerade
Festival intended to purge kalas (evil
spirits) from their winter houses.

The mask figured here is typical of
Koryak wood masks, whose only
elaboration is the marking of facial
hair. Reindeer Koryak donned leather
hood masks (right) representing can¬
nibal kalas to scare children. Chukchi
used a similar type of mask called
"hairy face" (above) to represent an
evil spirit who carried off naughty
children. Except as beastly faces on
Chukchi and Asian Eskimo eye
shades (Bogoras 1904-09:260), ani¬
mals were not represented in the ru¬
dimentary Siberian masking complex.

300

North American Cultures

425. Eskimo Mask

North Alaskan Eskimo: NMNH 64230
The American masks most similar to
Koryak masks are those from Barrow,
Alaska. This mask has a grooved
outer rim for securing a hood, a ruff,
human teeth, a mustache, and black
marks on its chin and across its eyes,
which Murdoch (1892:368) called the
"whale man's mark." It was worn
with a gorget featuring the whale¬
holding giant Kikamigo (fig. 444; cf.
fig. 350).

426. Skeletized Animals
Bering Sea Eskimo?: NMNH 168626
(otter). Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH
1076 (bowl), 38637 (spoon)

X-ray views of skeletons and lifelines
are seen on this sea otter carving
used as a kayak charm; in a hunting
magic scene in a bowl showing three
"x-rayed" caribou pierced by an ar¬
row and encircled by a thunderbird;
and in a similarly portrayed seal en¬
circled by pierced (tunghak?) palms.

Alaskan Eskimo

The ethnic arts of northwestern North America,
as known during the 18th and 19th centuries,
surpassed those of Northeastern Siberia in com¬
plexity, range, and originality. Not only was
stylistic diversity greater between these adja¬
cent regions of Asia and North America overall,
but also diversity within Eskimo culture alone
(see Himmelheber 1953; Ray 1967b, 1977, 1981)
possibly surpassed that of all Northeast Asian
groups combined.

The Inupiat Eskimo were renowned for their
skill in ivory carving. Tools and personal orna¬
ments were decorated with carvings of arctic
species like polar bears, seals, and whales; with
various types of line engraving; and with fre¬
quent use of the Y motif, usually thought to
symbolize a whale's tail but identical also to the
image of Siberian anthropomorphic charms (figs.
210, 260). Many Inupiat (and some Yupik) de¬
signs were derived from the engraved art of the
Punuk archeological culture (a.d. 800-1500) of
Bering Strait. Ivory drillbow narrative art por¬
trayed pictographic scenes of hunting activities,
village and ceremonial life, hunting tallies, and
even encounters with Chukchi and Europeans
(fig. 17). Pictographic art was also used in
hunting magic (fig. 445). Masking was poorly
developed by comparison with Alaskan Yupik
peoples (pp. 306—7), but garment transformation
styles included walrus symbolism (fig. 71), seen
also in doll effigies (fig. 350). Overall, the art of
Inupiat Eskimos emphasized decorative and fig¬
urative (pictographic) art and lacked abstract
qualities.

Alaskan Yupik art was more diverse, abstract,
and symbolic than that of Inupiat peoples. Tal¬
ismans and charms; decoration to beautify hunt¬
ing gear (figs. 47, 181, and 191); delicately
carved ornaments; tools, utensils, and grass-
work; exceptional engraved and painted art in
ivory and wood; masks of originality and imag¬
ination; and finely tailored fur clothing all attest
to the exceptional artistic skills of Yupik Eskimos.
Although West Alaskan Yupik culture was still
largely unacculturated in the mid to late 1800s,
glass beads were favored over earlier ivory and
jet beads; metal, also a trade item, was still rare.

Whales, polar bears, and walrus dominated
the iconography of Eskimo art north of Norton
Sound, while seals, fish, and birds dominated
along the Bering Sea coast, where these northern
fauna were not found. Similarly, Inupiat en¬
graved decoration was derived from earlier Pu¬
nuk geometric art, whereas engraved styles
south of Norton Sound tended toward animal
themes, often imbued with spiritual concepts of
power and transformation indicated by masked
images, joint marks, skeletal designs, and other
motifs with specific religious meanings.

301

Throughout much of western Alaska, Eskimo art
utilized a combination of figurative animal-style
and geometric art in both narrative (as in boxlid
and drillbow art) and emblematic form. In these
areas, the Yupik animal-style art owes more to
Old Bering Sea ancestry, with its many cryptic
and masked designs, than to Punuk art, whose
geometric styles influenced Inupiat art more
strongly. Outstanding examples of Yupik art
include human and animal effigy bowls and
containers (figs. 44 and 94), boxlid art (figs. 444
and 445), illustrated bowls and spoons (figs. 267
and 426), and an imaginative mask-making tra¬
dition (see below).

This description applies generally to the Yu-
pik-speaking Pacific Eskimo of the Alaska Pen¬
insula, Kodiak, and Prince William Sound, where
clothing, mask types, weapon decoration, and
other categories blend elements of Bering Sea
Eskimo, Aleut, and Tlingit artistic traditions.

Aleut

427. Effigy Dish
Bering Sea Eskimo: MAE 593-45
Effigy figures were popular on bowls
and dishes made by Eskimos of the
Bering Sea coast and Yukon-Kuskok-
wim Delta. These men wear labrets
(beads) and are posed holding the
dish in their arms, with their feet
braced beneath. Painted bands encir¬
cle their wrists and knees as well as
the interior of the dish, whose rim is
carved with an encircling groove. En¬
circling marks, characteristic of bowl
art and found on most items of mate¬
rial culture, are basic to Bering Sea
Eskimo religious beliefs (cf. Fienup-
Riordan p. 266). The occurrence of
effigy containers among Bering Sea,
Koniag, and Chugach Eskimos, and
among Northwest Coast Indians, sug¬
gests a common North Pacific origin.

Aleut art (Black 1982; Ray 1981) is more difficult
to characterize because few traditional artifact
types have survived from this region. Aleut
material culture is renowned for its attention to
detail and its elegance, style, and general fine¬
ness. These qualities are noted across all artifact
classes. Its kayaks were the fastest and most
technologically advanced of any in the arctic
world (Dyson 1986), its gutskin clothing the
most elegant, its grasswork the finest, and its
ritual hunting headgear the marvel of all who
viewed them. These paper-thin bentwood hats,
festooned with beaded sea lion whiskers, ivory
carvings, and flowing scrolls or pictographic
painted designs (figs. 181, 203, 204), repre¬
sented the artistic pinnacle of the type and were
so highly abstracted that their probable devel¬
opment from animal-effigy hats (Ivanov 1930;
Black 1982, and in press) is almost unrecogniz¬
able. This history, not yet proven archeologi-

cally, is suggested by preservation of putative
stages in its evolution seen in ethnographic
specimens. The sequence begins with Chukchi
animal-effigy leather visors and Eskimo decoy
hats of identifiable animal head form (fig. 200),
followed by intermediate Eskimo forms with
abstracted eyes, mouths, and limbs (figs. 201
and 202) and highly abstracted Aleut helmets
illustrated with multicolor scrolls, rosettes, spi¬
rals, and pictographs. The abstracted band de¬
signs are so striking and so unlike other art
forms in the North Pacific that one suspects
Russian folk art influence. Yet, nearly all of these
motifs can be found elsewhere in the Bering
Sea— Aleut region in less refined form, even in
Old Bering Sea and Aleutian archeological cul¬
tures. High social status was a condition of
ownership and display of the finest Aleut hats
and garments.

428. Painted Hunting Visor
Aleut: MAE 4270-96
Double scrolls, rosettes, and compos¬
ite forms bordered with dots decorate
this thin bentwood visor. The restric¬
tion of sea lion whiskers to the left
side of the hat kept the hunter's right
casting arm free of obstruction. The
meaning and origin of the designs
are not known. Similar motifs are
seen in the 2000-year-old art of the
old Bering Sea culture, and they also
occur in early historic Aleut art. How¬
ever, similarities with Eurasian folk
art designs and lack of Aleut archeo¬
logical antecedents render the history
of the style ambiguous (cf. fig. 203).

302

429. Klukwan Potlatch Costumes
SI neg. 209288, Eric A. Hegg, 1898
Art played an important role in
Northwest Coast ceremonial costume
and regalia. This photograph shows
Tlingit men in potlatch costumes, in¬
cluding Chilkat blankets and leggings
ornamented with skeletized birds,
bears, and other creatures. Ceremon¬
ial headdresses and staffs were also
on display.

430. Painted Skin Robe
Haida: NMNH 20807
The squatting semihuman beings
painted on this fringed skin robe
have toothed mouths, clawed hands,
and pierced (or eyed) palms — fea¬
tures also seen in Eskimo and Tlingit
art. The border design, probably a
sea lion, is a bilaterally symmetrical
split image of a single beast. Axial
symmetry, also seen in the central
figures, is an important principle in
Northwest Coast and Old Bering Sea
art. Skin robes of this type may have
been the predecessors of the appli-
qued button blanket, their orna¬
mented borders equivalent to the lat¬
ter's red flannel, button-decorated
borders.

Tlingit and Other Northwest Coast Groups

Northwest Coast art is even more difficult to
characterize than Eskimo art (Carlson 1983;
Holm 1965, 1 987; Jonaitis 1986). Regional styles
abound, but the practice of owning rights to the
use and display of crests, the acquisition of such
objects outside their areas of origin, and the
commissioning of works from acclaimed artists
whose fame had spread outside their own group,
produced homogenizing and diversifying ele¬
ments that complicate regional stylistic pattern¬
ing. For instance, Chilkat blankets, made among
the Tlingit, became highly prized as ceremonial
garments throughout the northern and central
coast, and canoes made in one place were
painted in another and sold to men living in a
third.

A differentiating feature of Northwest Coast
art, compared with the art of most other North
Pacific peoples (except Pacific Eskimo and Aleuts),
is its association with social life. Art was used
as crests to illustrate and signify social rights
and prerogatives, and the social function of
Northwest Coast art is emphasized more strongly
than is its use in hunting magic or shamanism,
which were primary concerns of northern cul¬
tures.

Tlingit art was among the most elegant and,
in some ways, the most restricted of Northwest

Coast art, being expressed primarily on baskets,
crest figures, boxes and bowls, blankets, hats,
and shaman masks. As in the case of the Amur
peoples, Tlingit artisans utilized a single, domi¬
nant Northern style that was applied to clothing,
painting, and sculpture in a wide variety of
media, though not in basketry. Using the visual
principle of the formline (Holm 1965 and essay
in this volume), Tlingit artists developed codes
to present real and mythical beings in highly
complicated and abstracted forms. In the fashion
of Amur artists, their figures are composed by
ingenious modification of a few basic graphic
elements within a complex field design; figures
and background design wrap around curves and
corners on hats and boxes, on spoons and halibut
hooks, on helmets, rattles, and other items. The
use of cryptic art (hiding animal forms within
overall design patterns, creating multiple or
alternative images, making figures within fig¬
ures) and frequent portrayal of semihuman beings
were also common. One type of motif, an ovoid
face composed of human and bearlike features,
is so standardized and so dominates Tlingit art
that it must represent an important supernatural
concept of character (figs. 281 and 449). This
being, used as a repetitive border figure, as a
joint mark, as a whale blowhole, and for other

303

purposes, has an iconlike function in Tlingit art
that is similar to the use of face charm motifs
in Bering Sea Eskimo art (fig. 198).

Northwest Coast artists utilized a wide range
of standardized motifs or codes to communicate
information about their subject matter. Since a
major function of this art was to represent
mythological beings and crest animals, character
identification was important. Species were ren¬
dered with diagnostic features — dorsal fin for
Killer Whale; thick, curved beak for Raven;
bulging eyes for Frog. The original key was
worked out by Franz Boas (1897), but even
Tlingit artists argue about the identity of problem
pieces. Other widely used motifs in Tlingit art
include joint marks, pierced palms, thumbless
hands, the skeletized or "x-ray” views, crouched
figures, and use of such techniques as split and
splayed figures, cryptic art, and negative fields.
Portrayal of humans per se, except in shamans'
masks, is rare, nor is gender indicated, except
in prehistoric art (Duff 1983).

Tlingit art also included certain styles outside
the formline system. A highly developed twined
basketry tradition employed geometric and non-
curvilinear styles that had little, if any, zoo-
morphic content. In some respects Tlingit art
was more restricted in scope than that of central
and southern Northwest Coast groups or of
western Alaskan Eskimos. Although formline art
seems to have spread south from the northern
coast, this style only slightly influenced the art
of the neighboring Chugach and Kodiak Island
peoples and was, in turn, little influenced by
them, except as noted by Bill Holm elsewhere
in this volume. Perhaps relevant to its artistic
traditions, origin myths tell of Tlingit people
arriving on the coast from the interior, and
linguists link Tlingit language with Athapaskan
rather than with the languages of other North¬
west Coast groups.

Athapaskan

Athapaskan art, like that of interior Siberian
peoples, is primarily expressed in clothing de¬
sign and decoration. Created by seminomadic
hunters and fishermen without permanent win¬
ter villages, who lacked any means of transpor¬
tation other than by foot or dogsled, Athapaskan
material culture was restricted in size and weight
and consisted of a relatively few artifact types.
Most outstanding was their skinwork, which
employed dyed porcupine quill and moosehair
embroidery in its early stages and, later, glass
beads, dentalium shell, and other trade goods.

431. Button Blanket

Haida: NMNH 89198b
Squatting skeletized humanoids (cf.
fig. 430), with wood dorsal fins
emerging from their chests, cover the
back of this appliqued dogfish button
blanket. The dogfish, a clan crest, is
recognized by its arched head and
downturned, toothed mouth. Huma¬
noid faces mark the joints of the fins,
tail, and dorsal fins. A double row of
buttons edges the red flannel border
that frames three sides of the robe.
The design is particularly bold, and
the three dimensional wooded fins
add a dynamic note to the flat, appli¬
qued dogfish.

Early contact designs employed bands of check¬
ered pattern quillwork and quill-wrapped fringes
as margin and chest decorations on fine, bleach-
tanned buckskin tunics (figs. 67 and 298). By
the mid-1800s floral patterns introduced into
eastern North American Algonquian Indian cul¬
ture by Europeans reached the Yukon Territory
and Alaska overland. These patterns replaced
the earlier styles and evolved into elaborate
designs on both traditional tunics and European-
style "chief's” coats (fig. 433) and on beaded
bags. One particular bag made by the Great
Lakes Ojibway found its way across North Amer¬
ica to the Chukchi, where it was collected by
Waldemar Bogoras (fig. 323). The appearance
of the floral design among the Chukchi via North
America and among the Itelmen via Russian
sources (fig. 421) completed its spread around
the globe, much like that of tobacco.

432. Silver Bracelet
Haida: NMNH 20251b
Khoots, the grizzly bear, a crest of
the Raven moiety, is seen on this fine
silver bracelet. He has a skeletized
back and perforated (or joint-marked)
paws and tail rendered in the split
form that allows both sides of an ani¬
mal to be shown on a two-dimensional
surface. Nuggets of copper had been
used by Northwest Coast peoples for
jewelery in prehistoric times. When
silver coins came into common use in
the mid- 19th century, they were
hammered into bracelet form, and
artists translated formline principles
and native designs to the popular
new medium.

304

433. Beaded Shirt
Ingalik: NMNH 129824

By the mid- 19th century quill-embroi¬
dered geometric designs (fig. 298) on
Athapaskan buckskin clothing were
being replaced by beaded designs,
and European cuts were becoming
popular. Both fringes, a native tradi¬
tion also prevalent among Siberian
groups, and the use of decorated
panels were carried over into the
newer styles. The floral design of
tendrils, leaves and flowers, derived
ultimately from European folk pat¬
terns via eastern North America,
reached Alaska through a chain of
Indian-White and native trade con¬
tacts spanning the North American
subarctic.

434. Raven's Footprint

Norton South Eskimo: NMNH 393156
For the Eskimos of western Alaska,
Raven, Creator of the World and its
beings and spirits, was also an un¬
trustworthy trickster. Perhaps for this
reason his image was studiously
avoided in Eskimo art, in contrast
with the frequent representations of
Thunderbird, and masks portraying
puffins, owls, and other birds and an¬
imals. Raven appears in western Es¬
kimo art only as a telltale footprint on
the bottom of serving bowls, and oc¬
casionally in ivory engravings.

Sometimes confused with Raven's
footprint is the "Y" motif, used fre¬
quently in prehistoric and ethno¬
graphic art of Bering Strait and
Northwest Alaska, where it repre¬
sents a whaletail. Siberian groups
use the same motif, in inverted form,
to represent two-legged anthropo¬
morphic guardian spirits (fig. 331).

North American Overview

As a group, the arts of the Northwest Coast and
Alaska share a number of general and specific
features that cut across the distinctive stylistic
signatures of individual cultures. As was noted
for the Siberian cultures, there are more simi¬
larities shared by the American cultures than
between these cultures and Siberia. The excep¬
tion is the Inupiat, whose close cultural connec¬
tions with Siberian Eskimo represent a special
case.

What is most distinctive about American art
is the manner in which it expressed spiritual
beliefs. Eskimo, Aleut, and Tlingit hunting and
fishing implements displayed high-quality
craftsmanship, used helping-spirit carvings, and
were supported by technologically advanced
watercraft and hunting costumes designed to
honor the spirits of the animals. Stylistic features
varied from group to group, but the underlying
theme of showing respect for animal spirits was
dominant throughout. Although shamans were
also important, individuals retained primary re¬
sponsibility for relationships with animals they

hunted by virtue of making and maintaining
their own equipment and performing necessary
rituals.

The social manifestation of these beliefs was
expressed in elaborate festivals and ceremonials.
Among Alaskan Yupiks, ferocious tunghak masks
(figs. 180, 436) portrayed semihuman spirit
controllers whose superhuman predatory capa¬
bilities were moderated by thumbless hands and
whose pierced palms signified a role as gate¬
keeper of the animals' spirit passage between
the sky world and the earth. Tunghak masks
frequently took on phantasmagoric dimensions:
twisted "Old Man in the Moon” faces (fig. 353);
hoops and feathers signifying the stars and
galaxies; and devilishly grinning beastly faces
festooned with severed body parts, blood-stained
mouths, skeletized views, and panoplies of ani¬
mal prey. Transformation masks, common in the
central Northwest Coast, were relatively rare in
Southwest Alaska, but some occur, having grin¬
ning heads that turn with strings and bellies
that swing open to reveal inuas, spirit beings,
tunghak, animals, and people in grisly encoun¬
ters (fig. 435). Even masks portraying gentle
animals were imbued with vibrant power (fig.
347). Animal spirit and controller masks of
similar form and iconography were used by
Kodiak Eskimo and Ingalik Indians (figs. 437 and
439). It appears that some Aleut used masks
with frames, hoops, and appendages similar to
those of Bering Sea Eskimo, but their heavy-
featured masks (figs. 164 and 440) are more
similar to some Kodiak and Chugach types and
to ancient Old Bering Sea forms (fig. 146).

305

437. Plaque Mask
Bering Sea Eskimo: MAE 571-13
Masked eyes, facial hair, holes (pas¬
sages), circles, and an encircling bor¬
der of alternating light-and-dark
feathers comprise the iconography of
this mask, which probably portrayed
a tunghak in his celestial realm.

435. Transformation Mask
Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 64260
Theatrical surprise enhanced the
transformational aspect of this mask
figure, whose hinged belly opens to
reveal a thumbless, semihuman tun¬
ghak, framed by fleeing, defecating
caribou.

436. Tunghak Inua Mask
Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 33114
This mask reverses the typical inua
mask in which the human inua ap¬
pears in the eye of a normal animal.
In this mask a remarkably fierce tun¬
ghak with a thumbless, "pierced"
palm, sporting seal flipper and kayak
bow attachments, is seen with its
prey, a meek seal, in its eye.

306

440. Death Mask
Aleut: MAE 538-2
Documentation indicates this mask
was found in a shaman's grave on
Atka Island. Like the similar Ekven
burial mask (fig. 146), lack of eye¬
holes probably protected the corpse
from spirit possession.

442. Shaman's Mask
Tlingit: NMNH 76855
The staring eyes in this old shaman's
mask are made of large bronze
Chinese "temple coins" embossed
with dragon and foliate forms. The
coins could have come from a junk
cast ashore on the coast. Disabled
junks drifted to North America by
ocean currents during the historic pe¬
riod and probably did so periodically
over thousands of years (Quimby
1985). But other sources of the coins
are possible, including native intertri¬
bal trade or the 19th-century mari¬
time fur trade between Canton and
the Northwest Coast. In any case,
they do well as mystic eyes in the
round, hollow sockets of a beaked hu¬
manoid spirit face, grinning with
power.

441. Pacific Eskimo Mask
Koniag Eskimo: NMNH 74690
Pacific Eskimo and Aleut masks in¬
cluded a type with high foreheads,
perhaps representing pointed-head
evil spirits of the region. This type of
mask was not found among neighbor¬
ing Bering Sea and Northwest Coast
groups. There are no masks like this
from the Aleutians.

439. Ingalik Plaque Mask
Ingalik (Athapaskan) Indian:

NMNH 45502

Ingalik plaque masks have the central
face, shape, feathering, and encir¬
cling grooves and painted bands
found on Bering Sea masks (fig. 437);
but its colors, hair, ears, ear orna¬
ments, cheek spots, shapes and
placement of grooves, and overall
pattern identify its origin as Ingalik.

438. Spirit Mask

Ingalik (Athapaskan) Indian: NMNH
339831

While utilizing elements of Eskimo
iconography like "spectacles" and
spots, this mask from Anvik, up¬
stream from Eskimo territory on the
Yukon River, has the long face, hair,
and ear ornaments that distinguish
Ingalik Indian masks.

307

Many features of the Bering Sea masking
tradition are found also among various North¬
west Coast groups. Transformation masks and
circular masks resembling the tunghak type
were made by various central and southern
Northwest Coast groups. More specific are the
co-occurrence in western and southern Alaska
and the Northwest Coast of motifs such as
pierced palms (passage imagery), muzzled jaws,
thumbless hands, skeletal views, split images,
lifelines, joint marks, "shaman's teeth,” eye
symbolism (closed, blinded, inset), and semi¬
human controller images. These similarities are
paralleled also by depictions of mythological
themes: Thunderbird, Raven (seen only by his
footprint in Yupik art; fig. 434), and the drag¬
onlike illustrations painted on Northwest Coast
dugout canoes and Kuskokwim kayaks ( palrai -
yuk). Northwest Coast sisiutl serpents or drag¬
onlike creatures and various wormlike forms,
which sometimes assume gigantic proportions,
are found in both areas as well. Other similarities
between Eskimo and Northwest Coast material
culture include effigy bowls, box drums, "house¬
wives” (sewing kits), and pictographic art.

Asia and America

In their published reports of the Jesup Expedi¬
tion, Boas, Bogoras, Jochelson, and Laufer had
little to say about Siberian- American contacts in
art and material culture; instead, they based
their "Americanoid” theory — the purported ex¬
pansion of American cultures west into Siberia —
primarily on mythology and linguistic ties. The
absence of more extensive parallels (other than
harpoons, skin boats, armor, the sinew-backed
bow, and a few other elements) was explained
by an intrusion of Eskimo into western Alaska
from Canada that severed preexisting links be¬
tween the peoples of Asia and North America.
Since the Jesup Expedition, a number of com¬
parisons have been made, but comparisons be¬
tween Siberian and American art have been rare
or nonexistent.

As noted previously, the differences between
19th-century Siberian and American art are
more apparent than their similarities and are
greater than differences within the Asian or
Alaskan groups. The similarities fall into several
distinct categories: Eskimo-Chukchi parallels,
pictography, and animal art.

Eskimo-Chukchi Parallels

Similarities between Alaskan and Asian Eskimo
art exist in clothing, ivory sculpture and en¬
graving, pictographic art, and use of simple

The arts of northwestern American cultures
therefore share common features of various
strengths and degrees. These similarities exist
both at the level of exchange between neigh¬
boring cultures and also at larger scales. At the
deepest level are parallels that stem from their
common roots in hunting magic and the hunter-
prey relationship; the specific artistic forms these
parallels take are less similar across cultural
boundaries than those, such as Thunderbird,
that have a specific (though perhaps ancient)
mythological base. Consideration of both general
and specific traits reveals a closer relationship
between Bering Sea Eskimo and central and
southern Northwest Coast art than between
Bering Sea or Pacific Eskimo and Tlingit art.

While emphasizing similarities, one must also
note the many differences in art styles among
American cultures. The shared features noted
above signify only modest interchange between
cultures whose arts are quite distinct and ob¬
viously developed largely independently over
the course of thousands of years. Ultimately,
only archeological investigation can provide an¬
swers to these problems.

human and animal image masks. Resulting from
common ancestry and extensive interaction across
Bering Strait, these 19th-century parallels are
to be expected but would become more inter¬
esting should future archeological work dem¬
onstrate a deeper and more widespread Eskimo
penetration in Asia. Chukchi-Eskimo parallels
also exist because of their recent expansion into
the Bering Strait coastal region and contacts
with Eskimo.

Pictographic Art

Pictographic art (Hoffman 1897; Ivanov 1954) is
not confined to the Bering Strait but was noted
among Reindeer and Maritime Chukchi, Inupiat
and Yupik Eskimo of Alaska, Aleut, Athapaskan,
and southern Northwest Coast groups, especially
the Nootkan and Salishan groups. Mythological
Thunderbird scenes and hunting narratives are
a frequent subject both in Siberia and Alaska
(figs. 51, 411, and 446). The inherent nature of
pictographic art makes it difficult to determine
if this art belongs to one or several traditions.
Nevertheless, its distribution and its possible
relation to North Pacific petroglyphs, which occur
widely in northern Eurasia and America, suggest
that careful study of this art form is needed.

Even superficial study, however, reveals sig¬
nificant differences between Siberian and Alas-

443. "History of a Year of the
Chukchi"

Chukchi?: Pitt Rivers Museum 1966-
19-1

A note attached to this remarkable
painted sealskin reads: "A Chukchi
drawing on sealskin brought by the
Captain of an Arctic Whaler from the
Behring Straits, given by him to the
late Edward Goodlake, by Mr. Good-
lake to Thomas Lord Walsingham,
and by Lord Walsingham to me
Alfred Denison, 1882." Its published
history is equally complex (Hilde¬
brand 1883; Hoffman 1897:938; Iva¬
nov 1954:449). Although alleged to
be of Chukchi origin, it may be Asian
Eskimo, whose style and cultural ac¬
tivities it more closely resembles.

According to Hoffman, the painting
depicts the events of one year on the
Chukchi Peninsula coast, whose
shoreline outlined in black around the
margin, can be identified as Plover
Bay, Chaplino, Michigme, and St.
Lawrence Bay. Its depictions include
whale and walrus hunts, fishing, cari¬
bou hunts, sled travel, encounters
with European whalers and traders,
armored warriors, village and camp
life, dancing, sexual encounters, spir¬
its, religious symbols, and a Kasak
ceremony (equivalent to the Chukchi
Keretkun ceremony). The two discs in
the middle of the drawing probably
represent the "Moon-Man" and the
"Moon-Man's wife" (cf. Bogoras
1904-0909:313).

444. Pictographic Board and Gorget
Chukchi: AMNH 70-7891; North
Alaskan Eskimo: NMNH 64230
Most Chukchi paintings are simple,
but this illustration on a plank illus¬
trates a sexual scene in a Chukchi
house polog, Chukchi women {left)
and men {right) in a line, and Euro¬
peans, with a dog, receding behind in
convincing perspective. Cranes {right)
and raptors or ravens {left) are
shown as profiled in the sky above a
viewer.

The notched-edged gorget from
Point Barrow is part of a ceremonial
mask and gorget set (fig. 209) depict¬
ing whaling scenes and birds
(crosses) surrounding a giant man
holding whales in his hands, prob¬
ably the North Alaskan equivalent to
the Chukchi Master of the Sea, Keret¬
kun.

445. Box Sculpture and Pictographic
Art

Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 36246,
24350

This lid from a box representing a
seal monster features hunting art and
defecating caribou pursued by mythic
Th underbirds, which hold caribou,
whales, and men in kayaks in their
talons. A hatted European and a
pregnant woman are shown in red.

308

446. Box Lid Art

Bering Sea Eskimo: NMNH 36242
Bering Sea Eskimo men decorated
the inside lids of their workboxes
with illustrations and pictographic
designs relating to hunting magic,
travel, sex, and encounters with Eu¬
ropeans (cf. Fitzhugh and Kaplan
1982:172-77). Occasionally these de¬
signs took on a more formal aspect,
as in this stylized illustration of a
whiskered and masked predator spirit
with a pierced ("passage") belly and
flipperlike extremities.

kan pictographic traditions. Generally, these par¬
allel the patterns previously noted in animal-
and human-style art. Asian and Inupiat Eskimo
pictographs frequently illustrate narrative scenes
and images of animal masters or controllers that
take (often gigantic) human form (fig. 444).
Anthropomorphic controllers are absent in Yupik
art and other Alaskan pictographic art; when
shown, usually only in ceremonial masks, these
deities have a beastly or only semihuman form
(fig. 346). A rare exception is the lunar and
human transformation image seen on a Bering
Sea Eskimo float board (fig. 360).

Animal Art

Animal and semihuman cryptic or "masked" art
occurs most prominently in Northern style (Tlin-
git) formline art and among Amur groups. Both
employ negative fields, complex backgrounds,
bilateral symmetry, composite motif systems,
cryptic masks or t'ao-t'ieh faces of semihuman
beasts, and other forms. Despite differences, the
underlying structures of some Pacific art styles
are similar enough to have had related ancestry.
More specific arguments have been made re¬
garding the similarities between Northwest Coast

309

Chilkat blanket designs and t'ao-t'ieh faces in
the art of Shang China (Covarrubias 1954). The
work of Schuster, who extended the study of
joint marks, skeletal art, animal styles, and other
motifs around the Pacific Ocean, long ago raised
the question of the survival of Eurasian animal-
style art in Eskimo culture (Schuster 1951a,b).

Asian clothing does not mimic animals as
explicitly as does that of Alaskan Eskimo, nor
are there Asian equivalents (except among Asian
Eskimo) for the animal-style visors or helping-
spirit engravings on hunting weapons. Among
hunting equipment, the only areawide decora¬
tive tradition noted is the decoration of quivers,
which in Siberia was present only on the oldest
ethnographic specimens. More important is the

widespread use of serpent and dragonlike beings
on Eskimo and Northwest Coast boats, and
sisiutl- type images on masks, clothes, transfor¬
mation masks, and soul catchers (fig. 45). Ser¬
pents are known in Amur iconography, along
with the rooster and the fish, which Berthold
Laufer thought were derived from Chinese in¬
fluence. Beastly faces are widespread in Amur,
Bering Sea Eskimo, and Northwest Coast art
(figs. 287, 435, and 449).

Hunting art is conspicuously absent among
Northeastern Siberian cultures. Except for har¬
poon technology among the Koryak and Amur
groups and hunting spear decoration (figs. 195,
307), Asian hunting equipment is unelaborated,
as are utensils relating to reindeer herding.

Throughout Asian technology one finds little to
complement the detailed attention paid by the
hunters of northwestern North America to the
aesthetic features of their equipment, either in
beautification of technology or in application of
spirit helpers. Among Asian groups this function
remained in the realm of special anthropo¬
morphic hunting charms representing masters
of animals or places, carried on one's belt or
clothing rather than, as among New World groups,
carved into the hunting implements themselves.

Differences between Asian and Alaskan fig¬
urative art also extend to the illustration of man's
relationship to animals in pictographic and fig¬

urative art. Chukchi and Siberian Eskimo artists
frequently depicted scenes of men hunting an¬
imals with firearms in ways that emphasize the
power of the weaponry and the role of man as
a manipulator of technology (fig. 236). In North
America, where firearms were rare or absent in
early contact periods, painted and pictographic
art displayed hunting encounters with less at¬
tention to technology and more attention to
social and spiritual aspects of the hunt, empha¬
sizing the personal relationship between hunter
and prey (fig. 181). Here, hunting art, the or¬
namentation of weapons, and use of ritual hunt¬
ing clothing were the hunter's way of asking for

447. Pictographic Drillbow

North Alaskan Eskimo?: MAE 4291-
50

Bering Sea Eskimos did not use en¬
graved ivory bows for drilling holes
or starting fires as did the Eskimos of
Norton Sound, Bering Strait, and
Kotzebue Sound, the most likely ori¬
gin for this specimen. Pictographic
art first appears in Punuk culture
about a.d. 800 and becomes more
elaborate through time, culminating
in the richly illustrative art of the his¬
toric period. Whether or not this style
began in the Bering Strait region is
not known. Petroglyphic art, which is
distributed widely in the Eurasian
and North American subarctic (de La¬
guna 1975; Dikov 1972; Lundy
1983), is probably linked with the
pictographic tradition in North Pacific
cultures. This drillbow depicts var¬
ious scenes from Eskimo daily life,
including seal hunting (left) and a
dance scene outside a tent (right).

The center panel shows caribou feed¬
ing and dancers wearing dance
gauntlets.

448. T'ao-T'ieh Mask

Shang Dynasty, 16th- 11th Century

B.C.

Beastly faces of predators or mytho¬
logical beings appear frequently on
ritual bronze vessels and in bone,
jade, and ivory carvings in Shang Dy¬
nasty China. The similarity of these
"masks" suggest that they represent
a single mythological creature or
being. These conventionalized mask¬
like faces are composed of discrete
anatomical elements — fangs, eyes,
homs/eyebrows, claws, tails — as
shown in this diagram (Davis and
Davis 1974:21). These elements al¬
ternate between a positive and nega¬
tive field of ornamental fill consisting
of delicate spirals, curls, and U-forms.
The overall design is always symmet¬
rical, showing both sides of the crea¬
ture in "split" form.

310

449. Chilkat Blanket

Tlingit: NMNH 357445
Early in the 19th century Tlingit
weavers began to make dancing
robes completely covered with form¬
line patterns derived from their
painted art. The figures represented
were crest animals, but they were
often so conventionalized that their
identity is not clear. A creature like
this one on a nearly identical blanket
was described to George Emmons as
a "sea bear," while to Franz Boas it
was identified as a "standing eagle."

Although Chilkat blankets in this
style are of recent age, they, and
other types of Tlingit art, exhibit in¬
triguing parallels with t'ao-t'ieh- type
designs of ancient China: prominence
of masklike images of fanged beasts
or semihuman forms, split images,
and reduction of figures to elemental
forms with stylized rearrangement of
their parts. With little archeological
evidence available, the significance of
these parallels cannot be ascertained.

450. Composite Shell Mask

Shang Dynasty, 16th- 11th century
b.c.: Royal Ontario Museum 2300
These fragments of a single mask
have been reconstructed in two possi¬
ble configurations based on intact
finds (Hsio-Yen Shih 1963). The frag¬
ments from a Shang tomb at K'ai-
feng, near An-yang (White 1945),
represent a demonic creature with
both human and animal traits. Simi¬
lar masks were used as horse and
chariot ornaments in burials. The lat¬
ter were known as fang-hsiang, an
ancient Chinese name for exorcists
who performed at times of death or
disaster. Similarities between
Chinese burial masks and composite
masks from Ipiutak (fig. 149) have
been noted (Collins 1971).

the gift of an animal rather than overpowering
it physically or spiritually. These differences also
extend to the depiction of spirits: Siberian spirits
were often shown as stylized humans, either as
Y-shaped stick figures, as in the common spirit

effigies, or with human likenesses (fig. 417);
among most American groups spirits took ex¬
plicitly nonhuman or semihuman form, their
status indicated by goggles, spiked appendages,
and beastly forms (figs. 435—438).

Prehistoric Ties

For many years, arguments supporting Asian-
American contact (e.g., Covarrubias 1954; Glad¬
win 1947; Heine-Geldern 1966; Rivet 1943)
relied on the intriguing but frustrating evidence
compiled from different regions and chronolog¬
ical periods. Among a larger group of parallels,
traits such as squatting ("hocker") figures, dou¬
ble-headed serpents, figures with protruding
tongues, bilateral symmetry, split and splayed
figures, and semihuman beastly faces seemed
to link ethnographic arts of the Pacific Islands
and Northwest Coast Indians to the ancient art
of Mesoamerica, China, and southern Siberia.
For the most part, lack of rigorous standards
and presence of large geographic and chrono¬
logical gaps in data caused scholars to question
the validity of these observations.

However, there is reason to give consideration
to Northwest Coast and Alaskan parallels with
Asian cultures. Although similarities in ethno¬
graphic art styles are not extensive, significant

parallels in underlying structures exist, espe¬
cially in Northwest Coast and Amur art. More
important, archeological evidence suggests that
greater similarities existed in the past than
during the historical period. Although archeo¬
logical data from the region are sparse, there
are suggestions that North Pacific and Bering
Sea art may once have been more unified than
it was during the past millennium and that
related forms of animal-style hunting art may
have existed throughout the region. Divergence
between Siberian and American art may have
occurred relatively recently as a result of changes
in Siberian cultures stimulated by economic,
social, and technological innovation— reindeer
breeding and metallurgy; by attendant demo¬
graphic shifts toward the northeast; and by
influence from Scytho-Siberian and other cul¬
tures. Perhaps it is too early to discount the
presence of a modified Old Pacific style (Heine-
Geldern 1966) in North Pacific coastal regions.

31 1

The existence of northward- and eastward-flow¬
ing ocean currents, which not only carried Asian
flotsam but also are known to have delivered
many disabled Japanese vessels and their crews
to the western coast of North America, provides
an obvious mechanism for direct contact, with
or without geographically intermediate links
(Quimby 1985; Brooks 1876).

The possibility that cultures of the North
Pacific may have been in contact should not
come as a surprise to readers at this stage. Two-
thousand-year-old Old Bering Sea, Okvik, and
Ipiutak art has long been suspected of having
been influenced by Shang, Chou, and Scytho-
Siberian cultures (Collins 1937, 1971; Larsen
and Rainey 1948). The cryptic animal-based art
of these early arctic cultures with its interplay
of image and field pattern, its transformational
quality, and its motif systems — all occurring
within a North Pacific hunting art tradition —
calls for combined ethnographic and archeolog¬
ical solutions to the question of Asian-American
relationships. Boas's original goals for the Jesup
Expedition are still valid and still need attention.
As we have seen, interrelated patterns of culture
and culture history do emerge when archeolog¬
ical and ethnographic data are viewed in larger,
trans-Beringian perspective.

451. Serpent, Soul Catcher, and
Sisiutl

Tsimshian: NMNH 10983. Chou Dy¬
nasty illustration: Freer Gallery of
Art. SI neg. 736821, Winter and
Pond, 1894-95

Like most soul catchers, this one
( bottom ) has large, toothed,
wolflike heads at each end and a hu¬
manoid face in the middle, only
partly visible here. It resembles the
Kwakiutl supernatural being, Sisiutl,
whose usual form is a serpent with a
head at each end of his body and a
humanoid face in the center (Holm
1983:55-57). Serpent figures were
also used as motifs on ceremonial
clothing, as seen here on a Chilkat
(Tlingit) Indian's shirt.

Compositions identical to the
Sisiutl occur in Chou Dynasty art
(top). Although stylistic features dif¬
fer, there are similarities in concept
and organization. In these respects,
and others, intriguing parallels exist
between Shang, Chou, Old Bering
Sea Ipiutak, and ethnographic Amur
River and Northwest Coast culture
art.

Opposite:

"Tamaima, an Inhabitant of Kodiak
Island" (Mikhail Tikhanov, 1817,
RIPSA 2117)

312

pjfl

'W&W*?.**'-'-

mm &r :

11 1

m%^

’•ijgi

Siberian Peoples: A Soviet View

V. V. Lebedev

The cultures of the native peoples of Kamchatka
and Chukotka, along with other peoples of north¬
ern Siberia, underwent dramatic changes in the
20th century. In 70 years of Soviet administra¬
tion, these groups advanced from patriarchal
social and economic organization to contempo¬
rary socialism.

As early as the 1920s, the Soviet govern¬
ment's attention was drawn to the difficult sit¬
uation of the native peoples of the northern
provinces of Russia, who often underwent fa¬
mine when hunting and fishing activities were
unsuccessful. Periodic epidemics also resulted
in dramatic losses of population.

In 1925, at the initiative of the two Siberian
ethnographers, Waldemar Bogoras and L. Ia.
Sternberg, the Soviet government organized the
Committee of the North to study the economy,
social relations, culture, and way of life of north¬
ern peoples and to determine what should be
done to improve their situation. The following
year, the committee instituted a population cen¬
sus, which was part of a larger program of
development. The census collected data not only
on demography but also on northern economy,
on the structure of population in the economic
(hunting) territories, on relations between indi¬
vidual households and between households and
markets, and on many other subjects. This cen¬
sus was an important source of scientific data,
which were the basis for decisive steps toward
socialist reconstruction in 1930.

In the 1920s a network of trading posts was
organized to provide the northern natives with
food and consumer goods. One of these posts
served the Chukchi, Chuvantsy, Yukaghir, and
Even, whose reindeer pastures and hunting
territories were located in the middle Anadyr
River region.

In 1930 the boundaries of the Chukchi and
Koryak national districts were set by the Soviet
government, which gave the Chukchi, Eskimo,
Koryak, Itelmen, Chuvantsy, Even, Kerek, Yu¬
kaghir, and Aleut, like all the other Soviet north¬

ern groups, a national autonomy with their own 452. Butchering a Whale at Uelen/
local governmental representatives. At this time Yanrakynnot, Chukotka
local cultural centers and "Red Iaranga'' were
created. The centers taught reading and writing
and provided medical care, veterinary and herd¬
ing advice, and economic and scientific exper¬
tise. The Red Iaranga, a political information
office housed in a nomadic dwelling, played an
important role in the struggle against illiteracy.

In the early 1930s six schools opened in Chu¬
kotka, where P. Ia. Skorik, I. S. Vdovin, A. G.

Menovshchikov, and others worked as teachers
before they became renowned ethnographers
and linguists. Many of the children they taught
went on to higher education in Moscow, Lenin¬
grad, or Khabarovsk. As adults, they became
leaders of the local soviets (councils) and Com¬
munist Party organizations, specialists in rein¬
deer herding, physicians, teachers, poets, and
writers, such as L. G. Tynel', N. P. Otke, A.

Kymytval', and Iu. Rytkheu.

314

In the early 1930s in Chukotka and Kamchatka
the construction of kolkhoz, or collective farms,
began. At first, these Chukchi and Koryak kolk¬
hoz were oriented toward only a single economic
activity; workers were organized in brigades of
communal fishermen, sea mammal hunters, or
reindeer herders. Later, the kolkhoz became
more complex, each encompassing two or three
economic activities.

The 1930s marked the beginning of systematic
geological study of Chukotka. It was already
obvious that future economic development of
the region depended on mining. Consequently,
a special Chukchi trust was created by the Soviet
government in 1935, under the General Direc¬
tion of the Northern Sea Route, which had been
founded in 1932 after the passage of the ice¬
breaker Sibiriakov along the Soviet Arctic Ocean
coast. All the economic and cultural units of
Chukotka above the 62nd parallel were trans¬
ferred to the administration of the Chukchi trust.
This administration had an influence on the
natives as well, improving the supply of goods,
conditions of life, and medical care. Airlines
were also organized for the transportation of
goods and passengers between Anadyr and
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskii, between Anadyr and
the northern Chukchi coast, between Chaun and
Ostrovnoe, and between Markovo and Belaiia.
The rescue mission to relieve the steamer Chel-
iuskin in 1934 demonstrated the need for aircraft
bases in the North.

In 1932 the First Pan-Russian Conference on
the Development of Languages and Script of the
Peoples of the North voted to create the Com¬
mittee of the New Alphabet, which worked in
all regions of the North, recruiting professional
linguists and northern school teachers. An al¬
phabet was created for the languages of Chu¬
kotka and Kamchatka in 1937. It should be noted
that just prior to this, Tynevil', a Reindeer
Chukchi, had created his own pictographic writ¬
ing system, which he had taught to his relatives.
National art also received much attention at that
time, with an exhibition of 1 1 cases of engraved
ivory tusks from Uelen at the Tretiakov Gallery
in Moscow.

During World War II, a significant contribution
was made by the peoples of Chukotka and
Kamchatka by producing meat, fish, and fur
needed for foreign currency for the war effort.
The economic organization within kolkhoz grew
during and after the war, so that by the end of
the 1950s northern villages became centers of
large kolkhoz territories.

In 1957 the ministers of the USSR and the
Central Committee of the Communist Party de¬
creed further improvement in all spheres of
economic and social life of the northern natives.

This decree provided concrete measures for
herding, hunting, and fishing, with an emphasis
on the living conditions in the northern settle¬
ments. Among other measures, it gave native
families a 50 percent subsidy for new housing
and provided for improved medical care, edu¬
cation, and cultural enlightenment.

In the 1 960s, a new step was taken to reinforce
collective farms by reorganizing some of them
into sovkhoz (state farms), a more developed
form of socialist economy. The present sovkhoz
organization of Kamchatka and Chukotka was
formed by the mid-1970s and today consists of
large state reindeer herding, fishing, sea mam¬
mal hunting, and fur hunting enterprises. Some
sovkhoz also include farms for fur breeding and
milk production, and even greenhouse vegetable
production in some areas. The sovkhoz budgets
provided for purchase of machinery, tractors,
whaleboats, motorboats, and for airplane charter.

With the formation of committees of agrono¬
mists, many areas of Chukotka and Kamchatka
started to produce not only raw but also pro¬
cessed products from traditional industries. Pro¬
cessing increased the value of food materials
and improved social conditions substantially.

The central villages of the sovkhoz are now
in the process of modernization, shifting from
one- or two-story wooden houses, which are not
very suitable to arctic and subarctic climates, to
four- to five-story modern concrete apartment
buildings equipped with appropriate sanitary
and heating systems. These settlements, al¬
though considered villages, look urban. They
include Palana, the center of the Koryak District;
Tilichiki, Ossora, Beringovskii, Egvekinot, Prov-
ideniia, Lavrentiia, and other regional centers of
the Koryak and Chukchi districts; and the sov¬
khoz villages of Amguema, Lorino, Srednie Pak-
hachi, and Konergino.

The sovkhoz villages were designed to meet
the social and cultural needs of the workers and
their families. Lorino, the center of the Lenin
sovkhoz in northern Chukotka, is one example.
The activities of this sovkhoz include reindeer
breeding, sea mammal hunting, fishing, fur an¬
imal breeding, milk animal breeding, skin and
fur processing, and clothing manufacture. The
higher governmental representatives at the sov¬
khoz level are the people's deputies of the village
soviet, or council. The deputies are elected by
secret vote by all the village inhabitants above
age 18. Lorino village includes a medical center,
a kindergarten, an elementary school with a
dormitory for the children of nomadic families,
public baths, a barber shop, and stores for
groceries, pharmaceutical products, and hard¬
ware. The village cultural center is in charge of
cultural enlightenment and has a mobile brigade

315

serving nomadic workers. The construction of
tall concrete apartment buildings has trans¬
formed Lorino into a snhall town. Today, radio
has entered the life of even the most remote
villages, and some also have television reception.

The economic reorganization and develop¬
ment of central villages has led to a completely
different social organization among the peoples
of the North. One third of the native population
of Chukotka and Kamchatka is now employed in
traditional reindeer breeding, hunting, fishing,
and sea mammal hunting activities. Another
third works in medicine, education, culture,
administration, and economic planning — disci¬
plines that require elementary and higher edu¬
cation or special training. The third group in¬
cludes service workers, nurses, unskilled sovkhoz
workers, guards, and others. All men older than
age 55 and women older than 50 receive retire¬
ment pension. All workers are paid, without
exception, according to a regional income stan¬
dard, to which is added the northern bonus. The
result is that workers in Chukotka and Kamchatka
receive a salary two to three times higher than
workers in the same positions in European parts
of the Russian Republic.

One tenth of the native population of Kam¬
chatka and Chukotka is considered urban. These
are the inhabitants and workers of the large
regional centers such as Petropavlovsk-Kam¬
chatski!, Magadan, Anadyr, and Pevek, who are
employed in medical, educational, and scientific
sectors but also, especially the young, as miners
and mechanics. The growth of urban centers
was determined by local economic conditions —
in Kamchatka by the fish industry and in Chu¬
kotka by mining. Before World War II Petropav-
lovsk-Kamchatskii and Magadan were only small
towns with wooden houses. Today they are
major industrial centers comparable to European
Russian cities. The same can be said of the other
regional centers, which shelter regional political
and economic administrations. These regional
centers are important seaports and have airports.
Hospitals, schools (one or two in each city), a
regional cultural center and mobile brigade, and
a branch of the State Bank are present in each
regional center. A soviet of people's deputies
with representatives from the soviets of every
village constitutes the higher political organi¬
zation at this level.

A characteristic of Chukotkan and Kamchatkan
industrialization is that state enterprises such as
fish industry and mining, although located on
native territories, occupy relatively small geo¬
graphic areas and therefore do not damage
reindeer pasture or the sovkhoz fishing and
hunting territory, except in the case of gold
mining, which requires dredging the riverbeds

453. Ivan Segutegin, a Chukchi Ivory
Carver Working at the Uelen Work¬
shop

of the lower Kolyma drainage. In most cases,
the ecological balance has been preserved, while
industrial development has facilitated urbani¬
zation and village reconstruction.

The settlement of Iul'tin in Chukotka, for
example, was built for the workers of a mining
complex, and roads were constructed to join
Iul'tin to Egvekinot, the regional center and
seaport, which necessitated the construction of
a factory to make concrete housing buildings.
This factory, in its turn, permitted the construc¬
tion of urban architecture in the reindeer herding
villages of Amguema and Konergino.

Two other centers, Anadyr and Palana, shelter
many administrative and political organizations,
including the agronomic committees of the Chuk¬
chi and Koryak districts; regional medical and
education services; radio and television, which
broadcast programs in native language; district
newspapers in Russian and in native language;
and schools of music, art, and teaching. In
Provideniia, a technical and professional training
school was built to train workers in the traditional
sectors of the economy (i.e., mechanics and
radio monitors as well as herders and hunters).
Therefore, training of native specialists at the
elementary level remains a local activity. After
graduation, young people who want higher ed¬
ucation leave to study in Khabarovsk, Leningrad,
Moscow, Iakutsk, and Irkutsk.

The highest political organization at the district
level is the District Soviet of the People's Dep-

316

uties, which is composed of deputies from the
different regions of each district. Special depu¬
ties represent the districts at the Soviet of the
People's Deputies of the Russian Republic (Si¬
beria being part of it) and at the Soviet of the
People's Deputies of the USSR. Representatives
of the Chukchi and Koryak districts are also part
of the special division of the Soviet of Ministers
in Charge of Social and Economic Development
of the Peoples of the North; for example, V. M.
Tototto, a Chukchi born in the village Inchoun
by the Arctic Ocean, is in charge of the Chukchi
District. Consequently, the native population of
Chukotka and Kamchatka is represented at every
level of political and administrative organization
of the country.

The art of Kamchatka and Chukotka natives
received an important stimulus after World War
II. The Uelen ivory engraving workshop (fig.
327) produced many remarkable artists, such as
Vukvutagin, Tukkai, Khukhutan, and Emkul',
who engraved scenes from the lives of their
people on walrus and mammoth tusks and on
reindeer antlers. Many of these artists are mem¬
bers of the Artists' Union of the Russian Republic,
and some have been honored as Master Artists
of the Russian Republic.

Ethnic music and dance also experienced a
revival such that today practically every village
has its own amateur singing and dancing ensem¬
ble with participants from both younger and
older generations, the latter imparting to the
former their knowledge of traditional music and

dance. These performing groups tour nomadic
settlements and perform at regional, district,
and provincial amateur festivals. The Koryak
professional ensemble Mengo and the Chukchi
professional ensemble Ergyron, which began as
amateur ensembles, are now world famous.
Although performing in many cities of the Soviet
Union and abroad, they perform primarily for
nomadic herders, even in the most remote re¬
gions.

One of the most important contemporary is¬
sues is that of native languages. An Institute of
Native Schools has been created under the
Ministry of Education of the Russian Republic to
publish school books for native-language teach¬
ing up to the eighth grade in the ten-grade
Soviet school system. More and more books in
native languages are being published, mainly
works of contemporary native writers and poets
such as, to name the most famous, the writer
Iurii Rytkheu and the poet Antonina Kymytval'.

The 1978 Constitution of the USSR gave the
national districts of the peoples of the North the
status of autonomous districts, providing them
with greater national autonomy — i.e., higher
political representation. The Constitution guar¬
anteed that the social and economic levels of
the formerly backward peoples of the North
were now equal to that of the rest of the Union.

New ethnic processes emerged as a result of
these social, economic, and cultural changes in
Chukotka and Kamchatka in the 20th century.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Chuk-

454. Winter Scene of Uelen Village,
Chukotsk National District
S0VF0T0: A71-11557

317

chi, Koryak, Eskimo, Kerek, Itelmen, Even, Yu-
kaghir, and Chuvantsy occupied territories that
were ethnically distinct. A person's ethnic iden¬
tity was based on the person's territorial group.
The folklore of these groups is filled with stories
of conflicts and raids, both between and within
ethnic groups. For example, there are stories
from the Meinypyl'ginskii Chukchi about the
warrior Kunleliu and his brothers, who fought
against the Reindeer Koryak over reindeer pas¬
tures, and stories from the Karaginskii Koryak
about raids against their neighbors to capture
women.

In the Soviet period, during economic recon¬
struction and the creation of the kolkhoz and
sovkhoz, the various ethnic groups began work¬
ing together in brigades, and a process of uni¬
fication commenced. Installation of the Soviet
political system also brought these groups to¬
gether to participate in important regional social
and economic decisions. Growth of larger set¬
tlements, modern social structures, and the de¬
velopment of education allowed previously sep¬
arated groups to interrelate freely.

Interethnic marriages are a useful indicator of
the closer relations between peoples of Kam¬
chatka and Chukotka. Such marriages were prac¬
tically absent at the beginning of the 20th
century. A few were recorded in the 1940s; they
became significant in the 1960s and have in¬
creased steadily to this day.

In villages such as Kanchalan, Amguema,
Karaga, Enurmino, and Neshkan, where the
native population is represented by one group

only, many mixed marriages with the European
emigrant population have been recorded also.
The ethnic composition of mixed villages such
as Vaegi and Tavaivaam in Chukotka or Srednie
Pakhachi and Achaivaiam in Kamchatka is par¬
ticularly interesting. In Vaegi, for example, on
the bank of the Main River, near the Vaezhskii
Mountains, children of mixed marriages con¬
sisted of 21.4 percent of the young (age 0 to
20) population in 1960. Today the population of
Vaegi includes 313 Chukchi, 2 1 Koryak, 8 1 Even,
31 Chuvantsy, 1 Yukaghir, and 1 Eskimo, which
represents 123 families in which one or both
parents are native. These families include 69
Chukchi couples, 12 Even couples, 6 Chuvantsy
couples, and 4 Koryak couples; mixed couples
number 3 Chukchi-Koryak, 2 Chukchi-Even, 4
Koryak-Chukchi, 2 Chuvantsy-Chukchi, 3 Even-
Chukchi, 1 Even-Chuvantsy, 1 Yukaghir-Even, 1
Eskimo-Chukchi, 1 Koryak-Russian, 2 Even-Rus-
sian, 2 Russian-Chukchi, 2 Russian-Even, 2
Ukrainian-Even, and 2 Buriat-Chukchi. In most
of these marriages, the spouses have similar
professions, as in the example of a 30-year-old
couple consisting of a Chukchi reindeer herder
husband and his Russian zoo-technician wife.
Children from mixed marriages represent 46.5
percent of the young generation. It is interesting
to note that mixed families have almost twice
as many children as monoethnic families. Finally,
we should note that during the 20th century the
native population of Chukotka and Kamchatka
increased more than 30 percent.

455. Asiatic Eskimo Dance Group
"Uelen" Performing "Dance of Joy"

318

Alaska Natives Today

Rosita Worl

As contact with Western influences intensified
throughout the 20th century, sociocultural change
among Alaska's indigenous population was rapid
and extensive. The five distinct cultural groups,
the Inupiat (Northern Eskimo) and Yupik (South¬
ern Eskimo), the Aleuts, the Athapaskans, and
the Tlingit and Haida are collectively referred
to as Alaska Natives. By the mid-1900s, the last
hunters and fishermen had abandoned their
nomadic way of life. Alaska Natives entered the
cash economy initially through fur trading ven¬
tures and later through participation in seasonal
wage jobs. However, villagers continued to de¬
pend on hunting and fishing resources through¬
out the contemporary period. Western religions
suppressed many of the traditional ceremonial
activities, but by the 1970s a cultural revitali¬
zation movement was apparent. The five cultural
groups united under a single statewide organi¬
zation to seek protection of their aboriginal
claims of ownership to their land. As the impacts
of Western diseases to which the Natives had
proven to have little immunity subsided during
the first half of the 1900s, they were replaced
by a host of acute social problems. The aboriginal
population, which had been estimated to be
80,000, had declined to 25,000 in 1909. By the
1980s alcoholism and suicide had reached epi¬
demic proportions. During the most recent pe¬
riod, two separate and seemingly conflicting
movements emerged among the Native Ameri¬
can population. One is led by the more assimi¬
lated Natives who are working to administer
land and financial resources under the corporate
structure mandated by the Alaska Native Claims
Settlement Act (ANCSA) of 1971. The second
movement began with the more traditional Na¬
tives who are seeking to protect their land base
and their hunting and fishing lifestyle as well as
to obtain greater control and autonomy over
their communities.

Village Alaska

By the 1950s the last remaining nomadic groups
had settled into permanent communities. This
ended the process that had begun initially with
the establishment of fur trading posts, schools.

and missions, first by the Russians in the 1780s
and followed by the Americans 100 years later.
The Inupiat hunters of northeastern Alaska who
established the communities of Kaktovik and
Anaktuvuk Pass in the Brooks Range were the
last of the indigenous population in Alaska to
abandon a nomadic lifestyle. The new commu¬
nities were generally established in sites that
were formerly occupied as semipermanent hab¬
itation areas.

By 1960 approximately 70 percent of the total
Alaska Native population, which numbered
53,000, was living in 178 villages that were
predominantly inhabited by Alaska Natives. These
villages, which were scattered across the half¬
million square miles of the state, ranged in size
from 25 to 2,500. An additional 50 sites were
occupied by less than 25 inhabitants, usually
comprising one or more Native families. Only 6
communities that were predominantly Native
had populations larger than 1,000. The median
size of the villages was 155 persons (Federal
Field Committee 1968). These larger commu¬
nities served as regional centers to the smaller
villages.

The remainder of the Native population lived
in communities that were predominantly non-
Native. The non-Native communities were often
established in areas that had traditionally been
inhabited by Natives. Beginning in the 1950s, a
migration of Natives from village Alaska to urban
centers began and is continuing into the present
period. An estimated 16,000 Natives live in
Alaska's urban centers. Anchorage is the largest
Native "village,'' with an estimated Native pop¬
ulation of 10,000. However, a high degree of
circular migration is found among the urban
Natives. Many return seasonally to their village
each year to participate in subsistence activities.

Most all Native villages remain fairly isolated
from the urban communities. Fewer than a dozen
of the villages are accessible on the state's
limited road system. Access to the majority of
the villages is only by air and seasonally by boat
or snowmobile. In the last decade, the state's
ferry system was expanded to several villages
in southeastern Alaska. Communication with

319

most villages was by mail or radio transmitters
and receivers until the 1970s, when telephones
were finally installed. Television was only re¬
cently introduced into most villages, but its
continued presence i's uncertain because of the
lack of state funds available to support the TV
satellite system.

Traditional housing has been replaced by
modern-style houses in all villages. Both the
federal and state governments implemented
housing construction projects in village Alaska,
but Native housing is still considered to be
substandard. In most villages in western Alaska,
modern water and sanitation systems are lack¬
ing. Villagers continue to carry water from
nearby rivers or lakes. In the winter months,
water is obtained by melting ice blocks cut from
the frozen lakes. By the mid-1970s, water sys¬
tems or water delivery trucks had been intro¬
duced into the larger regional communities. The
"honey bucket" system to dispose of human
waste is still prevalent in most villages.

Education

The education of Alaska Natives was slow in
coming, and it was often initiated as a result of
Native action. In 1877, a Puget Sound newspaper
carried the report of three Tlingit Stikine chiefs
who requested that schools be established in
their communities.

Education began with missionary educators.
During the late 1800s, several Protestant de¬
nominations divided Alaska among themselves,
and they agreed not to proselytize in one anoth¬
er's territory. The church schools were initially
supported by the federal government. Federal
subsidization enabled the establishment of schools
in Native villages and hastened the arrival of
mission groups.

The official educational policy of the United
States government was to "civilize" and assim¬
ilate the Natives, and leadership was to be
developed through vocational training (Ray 1958).
English was to replace Native languages, and
students were often punished for speaking their
own language.

In communities where both Natives and non-
Natives lived, segregated schools were estab¬
lished. The federal government assumed re¬
sponsibility for the education of Alaska Natives
while local governments and later the territorial
government assumed responsibility for educat¬
ing white children. The Nelson Act of 1905
authorized the two separate systems of educa¬
tion in Alaska but also allowed "children of
mixed blood who lead a civilized life" to attend
the white schools.

The requisites for leading a civilized life were
tested in court in 1908, when six children of

mixed blood attempted to enroll in the Sitka
territorial school. When they were refused, the
Southeast Tlingits brought the issue to court in
Davis v. Sitka School Board (Alaska 481. 1908).
The judge concluded that the children were
mixed blood but ruled that they were not civi¬
lized. Although the judge accepted the facts that
the parents spoke, read, and wrote English, wore
the white man's style of clothing, resided in
houses separate from other Natives, paid busi¬
ness taxes and rented post office boxes and
were members of the Presbyterian Church, he
concluded that these were not the requisites to
lead a civilized life. Native children were barred
from attending public schools until they were
integrated in 1949, which was four years after
the Southeast Natives had successfully lobbied
for the passage of the Anti-Discrimination Act
in the Territorial Legislature (Drucker 1958).

The village elementary school became the
focal point for the federal government's program
for the social improvement of Alaska Natives. In
addition to education, the teachers' responsibil¬
ities included those of a social worker, physician,
business manager, and general advisor. After
1920, the federal government established vo¬
cational schools in various regions of the terri¬
tory. The brightest students were sent to these
vocational boarding schools after they completed
their elementary training.

Until the late 1970s, most Alaska Native high
school students were required to leave their

456. Eskimo Women Fishing for
Whitefish on the Kobuk River, Alaska
National Park Service neg. 100023

320

homes to attend state and federally operated
boarding schools and high schools in urban and
regional centers. The famous Molly Hootch case
settled the civil class action suit brought against
the State of Alaska on behalf of Alaska Native
children of secondary school age who lived in
communities without a high school. The consent
decree that was signed in 1976 called for the
establishment of high schools in 126 small rural
communities (Barnhardt et al. 1979). During the
next decade, high school facilities were con¬
structed in these rural villages.

Post-secondary educational opportunities and
success are even more limited for Alaska Natives.
Although the number of Natives receiving higher
academic degrees is increasing, the actual num¬
ber receiving degrees remains low. In a five-
year period from 1967 to 1972, an average of
22 Natives per year received bachelor degrees
(Kohout and Kleinfeld 1974). The 1970 census
reveals that only 235 Natives had college de¬
grees and 73 had graduate training (Kleinfeld et
al. 1973). A differential rate of change between
Native men and Native women has also been
found in the trend toward a greater number of
females receiving bachelor degrees. In the spring
of 1981, a4to 1 ratio of female to male graduates
was apparent, and indications are that the dif¬
ference in the ratio is increasing.

Although educational opportunities for Alaska
Natives expanded throughout the 1900s, the
overall record reveals that success has been
limited. The implications of poor educational
attainment among Alaska Natives are far-reach¬
ing. The new institutions that have been intro¬
duced in rural communities require educational
and professional skills that cannot always be
found among Alaska Natives. A 1973 study
projected the manpower needs of Native cor¬
porations established under ANCSA and found
that the professional, technical, and clerical needs
would intensify existing manpower shortages
among Alaska Natives (Kleinfeld et al. 1973).
The implication is that non-Natives would con¬
tinue to dominate these positions.

Mixed Economies

Although the aboriginal hunting and gathering
economies of Alaska Natives were independent
and autonomous, contemporary village econ¬
omies are dependent on both cash and hunting
and gathering resources. In Alaska, the term
"subsistence" has been adopted to refer to
traditional hunting and gathering of natural re¬
sources. Throughout the 1900s, Alaska Natives
adapted strategies to combine and maximize
both subsistence and cash pursuits. Numerous
social scientific studies conducted during the
last decade indicate that subsistence-based

economies also continue to play a significant
role in the cultural and social realm of Alaska
Native societies.

Modern subsistence hunters and fishermen
require cash to purchase tools, equipment, and
supplies. Items such as snowmobiles, outboard
motors, fuel, rifles, and ammunition improved
the efficiency of subsistence production and
altered traditional subsistence harvest methods.
The adoption and need for the new hunting
equipment as well as other goods and services
necessitated the cash income.

The infusion of cash into the subsistence-
based economy is derived from wage employ¬
ment, the sale of subsistence goods, and in some
instances governmental transfer payments.
Members of the traditional social group or ex¬
tended families will often alternate among them¬
selves in either working in wage jobs or sub¬
sistence activities. Wives also seek employment
to obtain cash to support subsistence activities.
The elderly and other welfare recipients also
bring cash into the subsistence economy through
their transfer payments. These individuals often
contribute cash or purchase supplies and. equip¬
ment for the hunters in exchange for a share in
the harvest. Arts and crafts production or the
sale of surplus subsistence resources is also
another means to obtain cash to support sub¬
sistence pursuits. Cash also circulates through
the subsistence economy by other means, for
example, as compensation for specialized ser¬
vices such as sewing skins and covering the
frame of a boat. Individuals may also receive
cash as a ceremonial gift in rituals, as in the
Tlingit potlatches.

Kinship continues to dictate the membership
of a subsistence production unit. Generally the
household or extended family members com¬
prise the basic producing unit, but these smaller
units will join with others to form larger groups
to engage in communal hunts, such as those
associated with bowhead and beluga hunting.
Kin members who live in urban centers often
return to participate in seasonal subsistence
activities.

Distribution systems continue to be governed
by traditional customs. However, the movement
of Alaska Natives into urban centers has added
new dimensions to the distribution and exchange
of subsistence goods. Some villages have adopted
formal codes to ensure that relatives living in
urban centers receive shares of subsistence
resources. For example, the Inupiat community
of Kaktovik has formally designated portions of
the bowhead whale to be exported to relatives
living in urban centers.

Alaska Natives moved to regulate their own
hunting and fishing activities. In the late 1970s,

321

the Inupiat and Yupik hunters formed the Alaska
Eskimos Whaling Commission and the Eskimo
Whaling Commission. They developed regula¬
tion based on biological principles as well as
their own customary laws to regulate their
hunting activities.

Although the ANCSA of 1971 extinguished
aboriginal hunting and fishing rights of Alaska
Natives, other federal legislation (the Marine
Mammal Protection Act of 1972, the Endangered
Species Act of 1973, the American Indian Reli¬
gious Freedom Act of 1978, and the Alaska
National Interest Lands Conservation Act of
1980) as well as numerous judicial decisions
continue to recognize the subsistence rights and
needs of Alaska Natives. In 1978, the state
enacted a law that established a subsistence
priority over sports and commercial hunting and
fishing but made no distinction between Natives
and non-Natives. However, an increasing non-
Native population in Alaska and competing use
by commercial fishermen and sports hunters
and fishermen have made subsistence a point
of bitter and continuing conflict between Natives
and non-Natives.

The cash economy in village Alaska is largely
dependent on the public rather than the private
sector. In most rural communities, local, state,
and federal government expenditures account
for 62 percent of earned income, and the private
sector accounts for 38 percent. The reverse
characterizes urban Alaska, where governmen¬
tal expenditures account for 33 percent and the
private sector accounts for 67 percent of earned
income.

Village residents have a per capita income
that is considerably less than for all Alaskans.
The average per capita income for all of Alaska
is $18,018, whereas the average per capita
income for rural residents is $8,389. When the
regional centers are removed, the average per
capita income for villagers is $5,364 (Alaska
Department of Labor 1986). Villagers also re¬
ceive welfare payments that are about four times
as much per capita as urban Alaskans'.

Village economies are dependent on a sub¬
sistence-based economy and governmental ex¬
penditures and are fundamentally different from
urban economies. They are extremely sensitive
to governmental action. Restrictive governmen¬
tal hunting and fishing regulations and decreases
in governmental revenues severely impact rural
economies.

During 1986 and 1987, governmental ex¬
penditures in rural Alaska decreased dramati¬
cally as a consequence of declining oil prices
and revenues available to the state government.
The great construction boom in which schools
and other public facilities had been built in rural

communities ended. By late 1987, a rural eco¬
nomic crisis was apparent. Rural experts had
predicted that a rural migration to the urban
centers would occur. In September 1987, the
Anchorage School District reported that more
than 250 new Native students had enrolled in
the Anchorage schools. The State of Alaska
developed a rural recovery program in response
to the crisis, but the remedies offer no hope for
long-range solutions for economic development
in village Alaska.

457. Eskimos at Government School,
Wainwright, Alaska
Photo: Denver Museum of Natural
History BA21-091, A.M. Bailey

PUBLIC SCHOOL.

The Land Claims Movement

The reduction of the furbearing sea mammals
in Alaska, a diminished profit return, and the
demands of the Crimean War were among the
reasons the Russian government agreed to sell
Alaska to the United States. The general Amer¬
ican public believed Alaska to be a land mass of
ice and snow and labeled the purchase Seward's
Folly, after the Secretary of State who supported
the purchase. However, the economic potential
of Alaska had been evident to the Committee
on Foreign Affairs, which had access to reports
describing the rich fisheries and other natural
resource potential.

The transfer of Alaska from Russian rule to
the United States occurred at Sitka in Southeast
Alaska on October 18, 1867. Jeff Davis, who
was a career soldier who had made his reputation
fighting Indians, accepted Alaska on behalf of
the United States (Miller 1967). The 1867 Treaty
of Cession guaranteed that the "uncivilized tribes,”
which included those groups that had remained
independent from Russian domination, would

322

have the same protection of the laws and reg¬
ulations that applied to the tribes of the United
States. The most important of these protections
to Native people was recognition of their pos¬
sessory land rights.

The Tlingit and Haida Indians were not al¬
lowed to watch the ceremony in which their
land was transferred from one nation to another,
but they immediately voiced their objections.
They argued that Alaska was sold without their
consent and that the $7 million purchase price
should have been paid to them (Bancroft 1886).
Their objections were to go unheeded until they
brought their claims to court.

While the 1867 Treaty of Cession and the
1884 Organic Act recognized the land rights of
Alaska Natives, Congress did little to restrict
non-Native occupation of Native lands. The gold
rush, followed by salmon fisheries, commercial
whalers, trappers, and the military, brought a
large population of whites to the territory, and
everywhere they began to encroach on Native
land.

The Jurisdictional Act was passed by Congress
in 1935, allowing the Tlingit and Haida Indians
of Southeast Alaska to sue the United States for
the loss of their lands. The creation of the
Tongass National Forest, Glacier Bay National
Monument, and the Metlakatla Reservation for
the Tsimshian Indians who had moved into
Alaska from Canada had eroded much of the
land base of the Southeast Indians.

The Hydaburg Reservation, which had been
created for the Haida Indians, was invalidated
by a 1952 court decision. The judge ruled that
the reservation had not been validly created. In
contrast to earlier judicial decisions in which
Natives had been determined to be uncivilized,
the judge in this case ruled that the Haida Indians
were assimilated. He further reasoned that the
101,000-acre reservation would be created at
the expense of the whites who had nothing to
do with the exploitation of the Indians (Gruening
1968).

It was not until 1968 that the Indian Court of
Claims awarded the Tlingit and Haida Indians a
$7.5 million judgment, far short of the $80
million value claimed by the Indians. The award
did not provide for a land base, and the remain¬
der of the Tlingit' s land in the northern region
of their territory was to be included in the
statewide Native claims.

The Statehood Act of 1958 granted the State
of Alaska the right to select 103 million acres,
and at the same time it recognized the rights of
Natives to lands they used and occupied. The
state's proposed selection of land initiated a
series of protests by Alaska Natives. Native
people were most concerned that their hunting,

fishing, and trapping grounds would be taken
by the state. Village after village began to file
protests with the federal government. In early
1963, nearly 1,000 Natives from 24 villages
petitioned the Secretary of the Interior to impose
a land freeze, to halt all transfer of land own¬
ership until the Native land rights had been
resolved. The Secretary did not respond to this
petition (Arnold et al. 1976).

The Southeast Natives were the first group to
organize on a regional basis. The Alaska Native
Brotherhood (ANB) was organized in 1912, and
it claims to be the oldest organization among
American Indians. The ANB had attempted to
organize local "camps” in communities outside
of the Southeast but had met with only limited
success. It was not until*the 1960s that other
regional associations were formed to advocate
for land and political rights of Alaska Natives.
In 1963, several of the regional organizations
discussed the possibility of organizing a state¬
wide organization, but deeply rooted mistrust
that persisted among the different cultural groups
deterred its formation.

A growing awareness of the need to take
concerted action to protect Native land owner¬
ship finally prompted the formation of the state¬
wide organization, the Alaska Federation of Na¬
tives (AFN). AFN adopted three recommendations
relating to land protection: a land freeze until
Native claims were resolved, Congressional leg¬
islation to settle the claims, and Congressional
consultation with Natives before the enactment
of land claims legislation. Before the year ended,
Secretary of the Interior Udall had imposed a
land freeze until the land claims issue could be
resolved.

With the formation of AFN, the legislative land
claims battle began. The Natives' claims to their
ancestral lands were adamantly opposed by the
state. The Prudhoe Bay oil lease sales in the
North Slope brought the State of Alaska $900
million, and it brought support to the Natives
for the settlement of the land claims. It was
clear that no permit for a pipeline that would
carry oil from the North Slope to a southern
terminus could be granted until the claims of
Natives to land were settled. The assistance of
the oil companies and other business interests
assured the passage of a land claims bill.

ANCSA was signed into law on December 18,
1971. The statewide Native newspaper, Tundra
Times, hailed its passage as "the beginning of
a great era for Native people of Alaska.”

The basic provisions of the act were land,
money, and corporations. Under the terms of
the act, Congress agreed that Alaska Natives
would be compensated $962.5 million for the
extinguishment of aboriginal title to 330 million

323

acres of land and that they would retain own¬
ership to 44 million acres of land under fee-
simple title. Congress also authorized that cor¬
porations rather than traditional Native groups
or clans would hold title to the land and assets.
The land was to be divided among 12 regional
and 200 village corporations. (The act was later
amended to allow for the formation of a 13th
regional corporation for those Alaska Natives
living in the lower 48 states). The regional
corporations would hold subsurface title to vil¬
lage corporation land. The act allowed individ¬
uals who were alive on December 18, 1981, and
who were one fourth Alaska Native to enroll as
shareholders.

ANCSA was heralded as a monumental piece
of legislation. Alaska Natives were to receive
more land than land held in trust for all other
American Indians, and the compensation for
lands surrendered was nearly four times the
amount all Indian tribes had won from the Indian
Claims Commission over its 25-year lifetime.
The settlement was also a clear departure from
previous Indian settlements. Under ANCSA, lands
would be held by corporations under fee simple
title rather than as reservations held in trust by
the federal government. Congress clearly in¬
tended that ANCSA would provide the means
for economic development and assimilation of
Alaska Natives.

Alaska Natives were initially elated over
ANCSA, but it took only a few years before they
would completely understand the complexities
and problems associated with the settlement
act. Corporations would have to wait up to ten
years before they received title to their land,
and the cost of implementing the settlement
used most of their financial award. They also
came to realize that perpetual ownership of their
lands could not be assured under the corporate
structure, and they found that the shareholder
system did not allow for the enrollment of Alaska
Natives born after 1971.

The corporations have met with varying suc¬
cess. Several regional corporations and village
corporations have been extremely successful,
but for the most part, a greater number of
corporations have been less than successful, and
several are on the verge of bankruptcy. Alaska
Natives have proposed a series of amendments
to ANCSA that they are hopeful will resolve
many of the corporate problems.

The Tribal Movement

The tribal movement in Alaska began with Na¬
tives who feared that they could lose their
ancestral lands, which are held by ANCSA cor¬
porations. The concern of the tribal Natives is
that without their land they will lose their culture.

They contend that their cultural survival is based
on hunting and gathering of wildlife resources.
They also fear that with a growing non-Native
population in Alaska, they will lose control over
their communities. They are concerned that the
proliferation of modern institutions in the vil¬
lages, including the tribal council, city council,
corporation, school, and other organizations, has
been a source of conflict. They also express
opposition to jurisdiction exercised by a state
government and judicial system in which they
are not represented. They maintain that the
state systems enact laws and regulations and
render decisions that often conflict with their
needs and do not always represent their best
interest.

Thomas R. Berger, a former Canadian Su¬
preme Court jurist who is an internationally
recognized advocate of Native rights, was invited
by the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) to
head the Alaska Native Review Commission. The
ICC is an international organization composed
of Alaskan, Canadian, and Greeniandic Inuit
dedicated to maintaining Inuit culture. The ICC
established the commission to assess the impacts
of ANCSA. Judge Berger traveled to 62 villages
to receive testimony from Alaska Natives on
ANCSA and reported his findings in a 1985
publication Village Journey.

More often Judge Berger found that villagers
believed that ANCSA represented a cultural
encounter between two different societies. They
reported that the concept of buying or selling
land was alien to Alaska Natives and that land
was communally held by a group rather than
individual stockholders. They expressed concern
that the 10,000 to 12,000 Alaska Native children
who were born after the passage of ANCSA
were not given automatic membership in the
corporation as they were in their traditional
social groups or clan by virtue of their birth.
They talked about their subsistence activities
and how the sharing of resources under their
traditional customs established social obligations
and reinforced bonds among them.

Congress amended the Indian Reorganization
Act (IRA) in 1936 to allow Alaska Native villages
to form tribal governments. Seventy villages
organized themselves under the IRA council,
and many other villages are governed by tra¬
ditional councils. A common assumption in Alaska
is that ANCSA extinguished tribal sovereignty.
However, an increasing number of villages, par¬
ticularly in western Alaska and the interior
regions, are beginning to reassert their sover¬
eign rights under their tribal government and
judicial councils. Akiachak, which has been on
the forefront of the tribal movement, was the
first community to dissolve its local government

324

established under state laws in favor of the tribal
government and to organize its own judicial
council.

In 1985, a number of the tribal governments
organized themselves under the Alaska Native
Coalition (ANC). ANC was not successful in
obtaining an amendment to ANCSA that would
allow corporations to transfer their lands to the
tribal governments. A number of tribal govern¬
ments in southwestern Alaska have united under
the Yupiit Nation to strengthen tribal govern¬
ments and rights further.

The tribal movement was also in response to
the growing concerns over the social problems
that plague Native villages. Alcoholism and self¬
destructive behavior have been a destructive
force in many villages. The suicide rate has been
reported to be the highest in the country, par¬
ticularly among young Native males. Alienation,
loss of family, low income, and alcohol abuse
are cited as factors related to suicide. In an
effort to control alcohol abuse, many tribal gov¬
ernments have prohibited the importation of
alcohol into their communities.

Associated with the movement towards self-
determination has been a cultural resurgence.
Many communities in which traditional dancing
and ceremonies were prohibited by the local
churches have reinstituted Native dance and
many of the traditional ceremonies. Native lead¬
ers and elders organized cultural camps in which
young children would be immersed in Native
culture. Children spend a period of time in these
camps learning about traditional ways and be¬
liefs. The elders have reasserted their traditional
authority in many villages. They participate in
formal elders' conferences to record traditional
knowledge. The continuing political efforts to
protect their land bases and subsistence hunting
and fishing have become the rallying point to
protect the survival of Native cultures.

While the Native languages have been incor¬
porated into the educational systems, the policy
has been to instill English language usage as
quickly as possible. Dr. Michael E. Krauss (1983),
the foremost Alaska Native linguist, believes
that by the year 2055 only 5 of the 20 Native
languages will be spoken. He suggests that

Western Aleut, Kutchin, Central Yupik, and Si¬
berian Yupik might conceivably survive indefi¬
nitely under ideal conditions. Dr. Krauss predicts
that the first half of the 21st century will see
the death of most Alaska Native languages.
Tlingit is expected to become extinct with the
death of the oldest Tlingit-speaking population
in the year 2030. The Athapaskan language will
survive only in the communities of Venetie and
Arctic Village.

Conclusion

Whether the Inupiat, Yupik, Aleuts, Athapas-
kans, and the Tlingit and Haida will survive as
distinct cultural groups remains to be deter¬
mined. It is well accepted that the Native cultures
have changed dramatically since the time of
their contact with Western societies. However,
it is well recognized that they retain elements
and values of their traditional cultures that
distinguish them from one another and set them
apart from non-Natives.

Alaska Natives are on a collision course with
non-Natives who oppose the tribal sovereignty
movement and their subsistence rights. The
mere increasing numbers of non-Natives, with
their expansion into rural communities, set up
competing uses for the wildlife resources. Alaska
Natives have become accustomed to and de¬
pendent on goods and services that can be
obtained only from the capital economy, but the
prospects for economic development in the rural
regions of Alaska are uncertain. The lack of
economic opportunities in rural communities will
undoubtedly accelerate the migration to urban
centers.

Native corporations continue to hold all Native
land except in two villages that turned over their
lands to the tribal government. It is unlikely that
the corporations will reconvey their lands to the
tribal governments, but Alaska Natives are cur¬
rently pursuing a number of amendments to
ANCSA that they believe will ensure the contin¬
ued ownership of Native land. The record is
clear that the Native people have made a firm
commitment to ensure the survival of their
cultures.

325

Alaska Native Arts in the Twentieth Century

Margaret B. Blackman and Edwin S. Hall, Jr.

In the late 20th century, Alaska Native arts are
flourishing, for reasons perhaps best expressed
by Tlingit artist Jim Schoppert:

The exquisite work of our ancestors teaches us to
create work suited for the day in which we live. By
taking the old, breathing new life into it, and devel¬
oping a new creation, the spirit of our people lives
(Institute of Alaska Native Arts 1984).

We [native artists] carry with us fragments of our
culture and are now bringing those elements into the
much broader scope of world civilization. We cannot
return to the old ways, but we must retain the old
ways and reflect them in our attitudes and in our art.
This will be our contribution (Alaska State Council on
the Arts 1981).

By the turn of the twentieth century, relatively
few of Alaska's native peoples were making
objects that might be classed as art for their
own use, either for utilitarian or ceremonial
purposes. This is not to say that native cere¬
monies and accompanying artistic symbols were
entirely moribund; for example, a Tlingit totem
pole was set up on Pennock Island opposite
Ketchikan in 1902 (Keithahn 1963:61), numerous
works of art were made for the famous 1904
Tlingit potlatch at Sitka, and the participants in
the 1915 Tanana Chiefs Conference wore beaded
jackets as a sign of power and prestige (Duncan
1984:22—23). Nor were native peoples no longer
manufacturing objects of practical use, as dem¬
onstrated by the production of utilitarian goods
of Western design by the natives of Kodiak
Island. However, it was primarily in northern
Alaska that a significant number of art and craft
pieces were derived from traditional native de¬
signs and made from traditional materials using
ancient techniques; these objects were created
by the Inupiat almost entirely for sale (Ray
1981:58).

The course of artistic production by Alaska
native artisans from 1900 until the present day
has proceeded in different ways and at different
paces, depending upon the geographical area
and the cultural group involved, tempered by a
myriad of outside influences, including the arts

and crafts market and the efforts of governmen¬
tal agencies and interested non-native individ¬
uals. Table 4 indicates some of these factors
that have influenced the development of native
arts in Alaska over the past 87 years. The effects
of these and other influences on native art are
best known for the Eskimo and Aleut areas
because of the extensive research conducted by
Dorothy Jean Ray (1977, 1981, n.d.), but briefer
studies and scattered references in the literature
allow a general understanding of similar events
among the Athapaskan, Tsimshian, Haida, and
Tlingit peoples.

In the north, the Inupiat had long sold objects
of everyday use, and items created specifically
for sale, to the occasional explorer, whaler, and
other outsiders who arrived by ship. It was the
Nome gold rush, however, that prompted a
permanent market for "Eskimo art” as the thou¬
sands of goldrushers and their tourist successors
sought a souvenir of their sojourn in the Arctic
(Ray 1977:42—43). Art produced for the market
during the late years of the 19th century focused
on the engraving of naturalistic scenes and
geometric forms on a variety of ivory objects
including bow drills, bag handles, cribbage boards,
pipes, and whole walrus tusks and whale teeth.
Ray has distinguished four engraving styles
spanning the years from the mid- 1800s to the
present. In general, the progression was from
minimal, rather schematic figures carved on bow
drills and pipes at the beginning of the period
to intricately detailed pictorial-style engravings
on whole tusks and teeth or on cribbage boards
proffered by some Inupiat artists (most notably
Happy Jack) during and after the late 1890s;
subsequently, the market popularity of engraved
objects declined in favor of smaller sculptural
items, and correspondingly, the quality of the
engraving also declined (Ray n.d.:26). The mar¬
ket also prompted the carving of nontraditional
objects ranging from napkin rings to the still
popular billiken, which was first produced by
Happy Jack in 1909 (Ray 1974). Small animal

458. Aleut Ivory Carver's Tools
This drawing was made from mem¬
ory by Agagangel Stepetin of Una-
laska to represent the ivory carving
tools of his father, German Stepetin,
of St. Paul Island and Unalaska.
These tools include a carving knife
that can be fitted with blades of dif¬
ferent curvature and shape for differ¬
ent tasks. The tool with the T-handle
is a drill. A long, thin file, this one
with an ivory handle, completed the
kit.

326

Table 4

20th-Century Alaska Native Arts: Significant Events and Influences

1900 Alaska Historical Library and Museum is founded (Ju¬
neau)

1970 Division of Statewide Services of UAF begins Village
Art Upgrade program

1914-18

1920s

1937

1930s

1938-42

1940s

late 1940s

1951

1952

1956

1961

1962

1964
1964-65

1965

1966

1968

1969

First baleen basket is made at Barrow

Development of ivory bracelets, "Nunivak tusk" carv¬
ings, small ivory bird and animal figurines

Alaska Native Arts and Crafts Clearing House is estab¬
lished through auspices of Indian Arts and Crafts
Board

Teacher participation in native arts and crafts pro¬
grams in schools becomes mandatory

Civilian Conservation Corps totem pole restoration
project

Twelve Alaska Natives take part in workshop at silver
studio in Taxco, Mexico

First miniature ivory masks are carved

Caribou skin masks first made at Anaktuvuk Pass

Alaska Native Service and Indian Arts and Crafts Board
begin Shungnak Jade Project

Clearing House reorganizes as Alaska Native Arts and
Crafts (ANAC) with board of directors composed
largely of natives

ANAC opens first retail shop in Juneau

Eighteen Alaska Natives enroll in the Institute for
American Indian Arts in Santa Fe

Indian Arts and Crafts Board establishes experimental
demonstration workshop in Sitka to develop native arts
and crafts

Toksook Bay Arts and Crafts Co-op, Inc., is formed

Manpower and Development Training Act Designer-
Craftsman workshops in Nome and Port Chilkoot

Extension Center for Arts and Crafts at University of
Alaska, Fairbanks, is established (later to become the
Native Arts Center)

Alaska Eskimo Arts and Crafts Association is organized
in Nome

Juried Alaska Festival of Native Arts begins (Anchor¬
age)

Anchorage Historical and Fine Arts Museum opens
Beginnings of Musk Ox Producers' Cooperative

1971

1972

1973

1974

1975

1976
1976

1976

1978

1979

1980-87

1981

1983

1984

1985

1986
1986

Community Enterprise Development Program begins
program to stimulate production of fine art at Shish-
maref

Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA)

Development of "Silver Hand" emblem by Alaska Divi¬
sion of Economic Enterprise to denote nativemade
products

Visual Arts Center (Anchorage) is established
First Festival of Alaska Native Arts is held (Fairbanks)
ANAC store opens in Anchorage

Artist-in-Residence Program in Alaska schools is begun
by State Council on the Arts

State Percent for Art Program is initiated

Institute of Alaska Native Arts is founded (Fairbanks)

Artist-controlled collective Raven's Bones Foundation is
formed

Totem Heritage Center opens in Ketchikan

First "Alaskameut" exhibit of native art

First exhibition of contemporary Alaskan art at the
National Collection of Fine Art of the Smithsonian Insti¬
tution

Exhibition of contemporary native art at the Anchorage
Historical and Fine Arts Museum

Traditional Native Arts program of the Alaska State
Council on the Arts

"Seeing with the Native Eye" statewide conference on
native arts and cultural heritage programs is sponsored
by the Alaska State Council on the Arts

First Athapaskan Fiddling Festival is held (Fairbanks)

Exhibition of Alaska Native Arts and artist demonstra¬
tions at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival

Calista Corporation conducts a survey of arts and
crafts opportunities in the Yukon-Kuskokwim area

First Southeast Alaska Native Juried Art Exhibit (Sitka)

First Annual Howard Rock Poetry Competition, for
Alaska Natives

327

carvings and ivory jewelry also were produced
for sale early and have maintained their popu¬
larity, comprising the bulk of carved ivory pieces
sold today.

The Inupiat also worked in other media. Bas¬
kets woven from the baleen of the bowhead
whale were first created sometime around 1914
at the behest of Charles Brower, the Barrow
trader; later the manufacture of these baskets
spread to other North Slope villages (Lee 1983).
The supply of good baleen baskets has never
equaled the demand, and thus relatively poorly
made specimens sell for high prices today in
Alaskan curio shops; meanwhile the corpus of
skilled weavers declines steadily. Other North
Alaska Inupiat arts made for sale have included
dolls, skin clothing, caribou jaw sleds, skin, bone
and wood masks, objects made from jade and
caribou hoof, and paintings, drawings, and prints.

In South Alaska, that area of the coast and
adjacent hinterland stretching from the Yukon-
Kuskokwim delta area to Prince William Sound,
the development of Eskimo and Aleut art differed
from region to region. The Yupik-speaking peo¬
ples in the delta region are today best known
for their coiled basketry. Though there is some
evidence for greater antiquity, the production
of coiled baskets appears to have been stimu¬
lated by the influx of outsiders into Alaska as a
result of the Nome gold rush (Ray 1981:51). A
rise in market popularity began in the 1930s
and continues today; in general the salability of
well-made baskets, juried competitions, and the
efforts of interested individuals have led to
increasing excellence in production and inno¬
vation in design. Yupik artisans have worked at
ivory carving, graphic arts, mask carving, and
skin sewing for many years; in recent years
mask carving in particular has attracted attention
of both artists and the market.

In the Aleut area, the activity of basket weav¬
ing almost entirely disappeared after World War
II, but there has been a revival of late as a
number of younger Aleut and Pacific Eskimo
women have participated in formal basketry
classes and workshops (Ray 1981:61). Mask
making died out in both the Aleutians and Pacific
Eskimo territory, but at least two modern Aleut
artists include masks in their repertoire. Today
Aleut artists have also achieved prominence in
painting, sculpture, and jewelry.

Since the mid-19th century, beadwork has
been the most prominent art form among most
Alaskan Athapaskan groups, and the woman's
role as beadworker for her family continues to
be important today (Duncan 1984, 1988). Since
gold rush days, outside markets have also been
significant, so that now items such as moccasins
and mitts are commonly made for both family

and for sale, while others such as the baby¬
carrying straps once used by the Kutchin are
now beaded primarily for sale. The women of
several Kutchin and Tanana communities have
also worked together to bead elaborate altar
cloths for their churches. Contemporary bead-
work designs show continuity with older ones,
but motifs tend to be bolder and less detailed.
Today's beads are slightly larger than old ones,
more restricted in color range, and bolder in
color. Among the Athapaskans, manufactured
containers have now replaced birchbark storage
baskets, although women continue to make small
versions of the latter for sale and as knickknacks
for their own use. Coiled willow baskets have
become increasingly decorative as they have
been manufactured for sale.

Artistic production, primarily for local use,
continued on the Northwest Coast after the turn
of the century, despite depopulation and expo¬
sure to Christianity and other outside influences.
This was particularly true for the Tlingit; totem
poles were adzed and raised, Chilkat blankets
woven, beaded garments sewn, and masks carved.
Silver bracelets, miniature wooden totem poles,
spruce-root basketry, and beaded items such as
moccasins and small bags were produced for a
tourist market, and older pieces continued to
command high prices. Beginning in the 1930s,
a number of totem pole restoration and dupli¬
cation projects both employed and informed a
new generation of artists; for example, approx¬
imately 250 natives worked on the Civilian
Conservation Corps project (Keithahn 1 963: 1 1 6).
Despite this impetus and that of various work¬
shops, it was not until recently that artists began
to produce quality work in wood and silver and
other media. Chilkat weaving is experiencing a
small revival, and beadwork continues to appear
on the market. Bracelets and other jewelry,
beadwork, button blankets, and some masks
continue to be made for native use. At Totem
Heritage Center in Ketchikan and the National
Historical Park at Sitka, training and instruction
in traditional Northwest Coast arts are regularly
offered.

By the 1 960s Alaska Native art had for several
generations been predominantly made for sale.
As a largely tourist art it provided a source of
income for many natives — the only cash income
for some. At the same time, the classification of
native art as tourist art seriously hampered
creativity, for most important to the purchaser
was the ethnic identity of the artist and what
the piece represented, not the artistic merit of
the work. At the same time, the tourist market
for Alaska Native arts has helped keep the art
alive by making art production financially re¬
warding for native artisans. In the early 1960s

328

attempts were made to redirect the course of
Native Alaska art away from the souvenir art
market. Alaska Native Arts and Crafts (ANAC)
experimented with the workshop as a setting
for introducing new design concepts, new ma¬
terials, and up-to-date production methods in
Eskimo arts; it was hoped that the scope of the
art could be broadened while native arts yet
remained within the bounds of ethnic subject
matter. The first pilot workshop was held in
Nome in 1963. It was followed in 1964—65 by
the Designer-Craftsman Training Project orga¬
nized under the federally funded Manpower
Development and Training Act. The act's intent
was to provide vocational training, which in
Alaska included training in the arts and crafts.
Workshop classes were held at various locations
throughout the state where training was pro¬
vided in the local arts. The Nome workshop was
attended by Bering Strait men (and one woman)
and supervised by Ronald Senungetuk, an Es¬
kimo from Wales whose formal art training
included a year on a Fulbright scholarship in
Norway and degrees from the American School
of Craftsmen at Rochester Institute of Technol¬
ogy. Participants in the Nome project took classes
in basic drawing and drafting, sculpture, metal¬
work, printmaking, and lapidary (Ray 1967b).
Assessing the project, Dorothy Jean Ray com¬
mented: "The results were mixed. The older
participants returned home to continue the same
kind of work they had done before entering the
program, but several of the younger ones moved
from the Nome area to participate in newly-
established artists-in-residence programs in vil¬
lages or to take further training in other programs
that were underway” (Larsen and Dickey
1982:39).

One of the programs under way in the mid-
1960s evolved out of the Designer-Craftsman
project. Extension classes at the University of
Alaska in Fairbanks in native arts were begun
under the direction of Ron Senungetuk. For two
decades now, native students, regardless of
educational background, have been able to get
formal training in art at what has since become
the university's Native Arts Center. Beginning
in the 1960s aspiring Alaska Native artists also
traveled outside the state for formal training. In
the first year of its operation (1962) the Institute
of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe enrolled 18
Native Alaskans.

In addition to the educational opportunities
that opened up in the 1960s for Alaska Native
artists, other organizations within the state have
nurtured and directed the course of recent native
arts. The Alaska State Council on the Arts
provides fellowships and travel grants for native
artists, offers project grants and master artist

and apprentice grants in traditional native arts,
supports the Visual Arts Center in Anchorage
at which native artists have studied, and operates
an artist-in-residence program that places es¬
tablished artists in school classrooms throughout
Alaska. Until fiscal 1987 the council had a
Director of Traditional Native Arts, but budget
cuts have eliminated this position as well as
other programs within the council. Arts Council
funds also support a variety of other arts orga¬
nizations in the state that affect native arts. The
most important of these is the Institute of Alaska
Native Arts (IAN A), founded in 1976 and devoted
to promoting and providing services for native
visual, literary, and performing arts. In addition
to organizing and funding exhibits and festivals,
the institute has regularly sponsored workshops
for native artists on topics as diverse as Chilkat
weaving, basketry, beadwork, carving, bent¬
wood technology, a sculpture study tour of San
Francisco, and survival as an artist. Also impor¬
tant are the regional arts organizations within
the state that have been instrumental in adver¬
tising and promoting local native arts (see Table
4 for examples).

Since 1971 several of the native regional
corporations formed as a result of the Alaska
Native Claims Settlement Act have been actively
involved in native arts. Sealaska, the southeast¬
ern regional corporation, for example, has a
nonprofit cultural heritage foundation that bien¬
nially hosts a gathering of Tlingit, Haida, and
Tsimshian peoples; the several-day event in¬
cludes performances by dance groups, oratory
and presentations by elders, storytelling, tradi¬
tional feasts, and theater productions ( Alaska
State Council on the Arts Bulletin, November
1986). Cook Inlet Regional Corporation, repre¬
senting the native groups in the area surrounding
Anchorage, allocated a large sum of money to
the Anchorage Historical and Fine Arts Museum
to commission major Alaska Native artists to
produce works of art in both contemporary and
traditional styles; those collected works are now
on permanent display at the museum. Calista
Corporation, serving natives in the Yukon-Kus-
kokwim area, in an attempt to expand the market
for the indigenous arts of its people recently
funded a study of those arts and their potential
markets (Calista Professional Services 1985).

The collection and exhibition of 20th-century
native art has been significant in recent years
both in educating the larger resident and tourist
public and in bringing art to village Alaska. The
exhibit "Eskimo Dolls,” organized by the Tra¬
ditional Native Arts Program of the State Council
on the Arts in 1982, exemplifies the attention
given to traditional arts still being practiced
(Jones 1982). Like many exhibits it was not only

329

shown in major population centers but also
traveled to village Alaska. Workshops sponsored
by various institutions have often resulted in
exhibits or juried competitions of native art. The
"Alaskameut" ("from Alaska”) exhibits of native
art in 1978, 1980, and 1986 all grew out of
workshops, as did "Interwoven Expressions,” a
1985 exhibit of contemporary native basketry,
and "New Traditions,” a 1984 native sculpture
exhibit. In 1980 the Alaska State Museum and
the State Council on the Arts joined to organize
a juried native art woodworking competition.
This was followed in 1981 by a juried competition
in wood, ivory, and bone. Regional native art
competitions such as the annual Beaver Roundup,
Barrow's Suliavut, and the Kivetoruk Moses Art
Show are popular and draw significant numbers
of participants. The juried competitions, like
recent exhibits, have included both traditional
and contemporary native arts, reflective of the
two major directions Alaska native art has taken
since the 1960s. Other special exhibits of 20th-
century native art include the University of
Alaska Museum's exhibits of modern Alaska
Eskimo ivory carving (Larsen and Dickey 1982),
Athapaskan beadwork (Duncan 1984), and the
lifework of four traditional Alaska Native artists
(Jones 1986). In addition to the two larger
museums in Anchorage and Fairbanks, regional
museums such as the Yugtarvik Museum in
Bethel have also played an important role in
exhibiting and nurturing native arts.

Publications have done much to promote and
educate the public about Alaska Native art;
Dorothy Jean Ray's (1961, 1967b, 1977, 1981)
work on Eskimo art, in particular, is internation¬
ally known. The widely publicized and traveled
"Inua” exhibit of Smithsonian material from the
Bering Sea area brought 19th-century Yupik
Eskimo art to the attention of the general public.
The "Inua” catalog (Fitzhugh and Kaplan 1982)
included a chapter on modern Eskimo art. In
addition, there are a number of less widely
distributed catalogs and other works published
within the state that have documented little-
known art forms (Jones 1982; Lee 1983), pro¬
vided new perspectives on well-known tradi¬
tional arts (Larsen and Dickey 1982), brought
together contemporary and traditional art forms
in a visual display and given voice to their
creators (Steinbright 1 986), provided an in-depth
look at the artists behind the work (Jones 1986),
and showcased the works of individual artists
(O'Brien 1986). For a number of years the
Institute of Alaska Native Arts has published a
bimonthly journal distributed to over 4,000 peo¬
ple featuring Alaska Native arts through staff
interviews with artists, native poetry, and news
of artists, exhibits, conferences, and workshops.

Much could be written of the changes in Alaska
Native arts in the 20th century. One can readily
visualize some of them by comparing the pho¬
tographs of native art accompanying this essay
with the photographs of traditional native art
shown in several of the bibliographic sources.
Several recent trends are noteworthy. As else¬
where in native North America today, increasing
numbers of women are working in art forms
that were once a strictly male domain, many
native artists have broadened their artistic ho¬
rizons to include contemporary design and me¬
dia, and, although over 90 percent of Alaska
Native art is made for sale, an increasing amount
is being made for native use. Art made for native
consumption is not art for art's sake; rather, the
masks, ceremonial blankets, beadwork, drums,
dance fans, and other paraphernalia are made
for native ceremonies. These works of art speak
to the growth of native performing arts, which,
like the visual art forms, are expressive of a
newfound pride in native heritage and identity
and, like the visual arts, have been supported
by the institutions discussed above. Native danc¬
ing is performed regularly in the summer in the
larger native communities such as Barrow and
Kotzebue for tourists; dances are part of the
Christmas celebrations in many villages and are
performed on other occasions particular to in¬
dividual ethnic groups. Native dance groups from
throughout the state gather to dance and com¬
pete at the annual summer World Eskimo-Indian
Olympics and at the spring Native Arts Festival,
both held in Fairbanks. Native theater is also
flourishing in several localities. Native arts have
received added visibility through numerous pub¬
lic commissions during the last decade under
the state's Percent for Art Program. Sullivan
Arena and the Egan Convention Center in An¬
chorage as well as the Anchorage Airport prom¬
inently display examples of such commissioned
works. A massive example of native-inspired
public art can be seen in the interior decoration
of the Anchorage Sheraton Hotel; the columns
in the lobby are painted to represent Kodiak
Eskimo arrow quivers, the floor tiles mimic
Tlingit rattle basket tops, and the wallpaper
motif is taken from Yupik coiled basketry.

Although the focus in this essay has been on
the visual arts, native literary arts have bur¬
geoned in recent years, receiving public atten¬
tion through publication and the institutions
supporting them. Oral traditions have been care¬
fully committed to the written word (e.g., Dauen-
hauer and Dauenhauer 1987), native writers
have participated in several writers' workshops
offered in native communities, and an annual
native poetry competition, inaugurated in 1986,
has drawn talented native writers.

Several people provided invaluable help
in putting together this essay, offering
critical comments on our first draft,
providing data and photographs, and
interviewing some of the artists. We
extend our thanks to Janet Brower. Pete
Corey, Kate Duncan, Ann Fienup-
Riordan. Rose Atuk Fosdick, Suzi Jones,
Dave Libbey, Jim Schoppert. and Lynn
Wallen. Special thanks to all the artists,
who are identified with their works in
the plates accompanying this article.

330

Twenty Contemporary Alaskan Artists

Lawrence Ullaaq Aviaq Ahvakana (Inupiat, b. 1946) received
his training at the Institute of American Indian Arts (Santa Fe),
the Rhode Island School of Design, the Cooper Union School
of Art, and the Pilchuck Glass Center. His work with various
media, including sculpture in alabaster, metal, wood and blown,
cast, and fused glass has led to positions as artist in residence
at Barrow and at the Visual Arts Center in Anchorage and as
art instructor in 1977 at the Institute of American Indian Arts.
Ahvakana's pieces have been exhibited in many galleries and
shows, including the Heard Museum Invitational in Phoenix
(1967—69), Brooklyn Fine Arts Museum (1971), Smithsonian
Portrait Gallery (1972), All- Alaska Juried Arts Show (1974—
75), Alaska State Museum (solo exhibit 1977), Smithsonian
Institution ("Alaskan Art" 1978), Sacred Circle Gallery in Seattle
(1981), the Field Museum in Chicago ("Exhibition of Contem¬
porary Pacific Rim Art" 1982), and the Contemporary Art
Center in New Orleans ("Other Gods: Containers of Belief”
1986). Numerous permanent collections (the Atlantic Richfield
Corporation, the North Slope Borough, and the Alaska State
Council on the Arts, for example) include his work. Major
commissions can be seen at the North Slope Borough High
School (bronze sculpture), the Alaska State Court building in
Anchorage (welded wall relief), the Institute of American Indian
Arts (welded sculpture), and the Rainier Bank in Anchorage
(stone sculpture).

"My culture is a living culture. It is not a static or dead way
of life but an ever-changing metamorphosis of adaptation. My
grandfather Ahvakan was among the generation to first expe¬
rience the beginning of adaptation. He showed me that change
was not the death of a culture. Ahvakan, like many elders, was
a composer of songs. He used singing as a tool to pass on
many of these insights and personal interpretations of life as
it changed around him. Being an Inupiat is not bound by
landscape. I live away from my ancestral home but retain the
essence of my ancestors. It is this basic nature of our way of
life which I capture in my artwork. The tools may be modern,
the material perhaps foreign to my grandfather, but the final
statement would be the same.

"The spirit of my peoples' identity and its evolution [up] to
today are expressed within the songs and dances. The drummer
is the caretaker of this spirit."

459. Drummer
Marble relief
2'X2'X4"

331

48" x 56" x 24"

Sylvester Ayek (Inupiat, b. 1940s) has been working for more
than 25 years in ivory, hardwoods, metal, and stone. He was
born on King Island, the center of ivory carving in Alaska, and
sought training at the Extension Center for Alaska Native Arts
(Fairbanks), Alaska Pacific University, the University of Alaska,
and the Visual Arts Center of Alaska. Ayek's pieces have been
displayed at the Anchorage Historical and Fine Arts Museum,
the Visual Arts Center of Alaska, and numerous Anchorage
and Fairbanks galleries. Purchasers include the above institu¬
tions as well as many private collectors. For Ayek, the message
of his art is "Possibilities for growth are unlimited if you are
unafraid to experiment with new forms and materials.”

461. Day and Night Journey to the Spawning Grounds
Wood, ivory, and braided nylon
5'3" X 4' X 6"

Alvin Eli Amason (Aleut, b. 1948) has worked for the past 17
years in mixed-media paintings and sculpture, lithographs, and
silk-screen prints. His training includes an M.A. from Central
Washington University and an M.F.A. from Arizona State
University. Amason' s artistic creations, however, come from
his past: "I like to make things out of memories and sometimes
out of things I'd like to see. Being raised in a colorful land with
colorful people gave me attitudes that help me make these
things. . . . Like Bill de Kooning, I believe the ultimate high
occurs when you feel you're walking in your own landscape.”
Paintings resulting from Amason' s memories have been seen
at the National Collection of Fine Art (Smithsonian Institution),
Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum (Aalborg, Denmark), American In¬
dian Arts and Crafts Board (Washington, D.C), Alaska State
Museum, Anchorage Historical and Fine Arts Museum, and
many galleries. Important commissions have included the U.S.
Federal Art in Architecture Program (U.S. Federal Building,
Anchorage) and the Alaska Percent for Art Program (Anchorage
International Airport).

"I like this one because of the youth and the hope it
expresses."

332

Larry J. Beck (Yupik, b. 1938) has long made large-scale
abstract fabricated steel and cast-metal sculptures, but in 1981
he turned to making masks of what he calls "found” materials.
Beck's walruses, polar bears, and other creatures are fashioned
from hubcaps, auto mirrors, kitchen utensils, and similar ma¬
terials. His work has met with great acceptance, having been
shown in almost 100 exhibitions since 1964 and having received
many awards and honors. Pieces by Beck grace many major
public and private collections: the U.S. Department of the
Interior, Calista Corporation (Anchorage), the University of
Alaska Museum (Fairbanks), and the Heard Museum (Phoenix)
being examples. Larry Beck's artistic training includes a B.A.
in painting from the University of Washington in 1964 and a
M.F.A. in sculpture from the same institution the next year; in
turn, he has taught and lectured at universities throughout the
west and in England. But just as Beck's artistic creations reflect
his training, they also speak of his Yupik heritage.

"I am an Eskimo, but I'm also a 20th-century American. I
live in a modern city where my found materials come from
junk yards, trash cans, and industrial waste facilities, since the
ancient beaches where my ancestors found driftwood and
washed-up debris from shipwrecks are no longer available to
me. But my visions are mine, and even though I use Baby
Moon hubcaps, pop rivets, snow tires, Teflon spatulas, dental
pick mirrors, and stuff to make my spirits, this is a process to
which the old artists could relate. Because, below these relics
of your world, reside the old forces familiar to the Inua.”

462. Punk Walrus Inua
Mixed media (1986)

Rita Pitka Blumenstein (Yupik, b. 1933) is best known as a
basketmaker, though she lists skin sewing, beading, dancing,
and storytelling on mud (drawing of figures with a special knife
in the illustration of girls' stories). She has been working in
these media since her teens. Her woven baskets are on display
in the Alaska State Museum, the University of Alaska (Fair¬
banks), and the Smithsonian. Blumenstein has demonstrated
her craft at the Anchorage Historical and Fine Arts Museum,
the Sheldon Jackson Museum in Sitka, and the Smithsonian
Folklife Festival (1984), among other places. For ten years she
has taught basketry and other Alaska Native arts at Matanuska-
Susitna Community College at the University of Alaska. Of her
weaving, she says, "Since it's a fast-disappearing art, I would
like to keep it from disappearing.”

463. Grass Basket

333

Archie K. Brower {Inupiat, b. 1929) learned how to make
baleen baskets at the Bureau of Indian Affairs school in Barrow
sometime in the 1940s but did not work actively at the craft
until about ten years ago. When asked what philosophy guided
his basketmaking, Brower concluded, "I just try to do the best
1 can.” Most of Archie's baskets have been sold through gift
shops in Fairbanks.

This basket won $1000 for best of show in Suliavut, Barrow's
annual arts and crafts show. Brower entered it in Suliavut
because "I just wanted to try it out and see how I would do."

464. Baleen Basket
Baleen and ivory
7j" X 6"

Nicholas Charles, Sr. (Yupik Eskimo, b. 1910), was born on
Nelson Island but has lived, with his wife, in Bethel since 1943.
As a young boy he learned the carving skills in the village
men's house from his father and other men that would later
make him known to a larger world as an extraordinary mask
maker. Today his masks not only sell in Anchorage shops but,
more important, are also made for local native use. What is
important to Charles is not the finished product but the process
of making the mask and the performance of it in the dance.
Today Charles and his wife, Elena, are active teaching dancing
and carving throughout the Yukon-Kuskokwim delta region. His
exquisite pieces can be found at Yugtarvik Museum in Bethel,
the University of Alaska Museum in Fairbanks, and the Smith¬
sonian, as well as in numerous private collections. In 1982
Charles was one of several participants in a mask-making
workshop in Bethel sponsored by the State Council on the Arts;
in 1984 he traveled to Washington to participate in the Smith¬
sonian Folklife Festival; and in 1985 he participated in the
Native Art Festival at the Anchorage Historical and Fine Arts
Museum. In 1986 he was one of four native artists featured in
the exhibit "The Artists behind the Work,” organized by the
University of Alaska Museum, Fairbanks. The double-headed
hawk mask shown here won him a merit award at the 1980
Statewide Native Woodworking competition.

465. Double-headed Hawk Mask

334

Delores Churchill (Haida, b. 1929) has been weaving baskets
since 1972, having learned Haida basketry from her mother,
Selina Peratrovich, a well-known Haida weaver. Churchill has
also trained in Tlingit, Tsimshian, and Aleut basketry and in
Athapaskan birchbark basketmaking. More recently she has
studied Chilkat and raven's tail (geometric) weaving under
Cheryl Samuel. From Jennie Thlunaut, the last traditional
Chilkat weaver from Klukwan, Churchill learned more than
weaving. "Her humility, grace, and wonderful sense of hu¬
mor ... I strive to emulate.” Delores's works have been exhib¬
ited in Honolulu in "Pacific Basketmakers: A Living Tradition”
(1983), at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C.
(1984), at the Anchorage Historical and Fine Arts Museum
(1977—86), and at the Stonington Gallery in Seattle (1986),
among other places. She has taught numerous workshops in
basketry and received several awards for her work, including
the Alaska State Legislative Award, in recognition of her
commitment to native art.

"This basket cup and cover are symbolic of the interwoven
tradition of basketry spanning several thousand years. My
mother, Selina Peratrovich, saw her uncles drink salt water
from a similar container to purify themselves when fasting
before going hunting, fishing, or trapping. The uncles would
not drink the salt water until they had blown it in all the
directions from which the prevailing winds blew; this insured
them good fortune in their endeavors. These glimpses into the
past weave me culturally to my ancestry and help me to
maintain stability in the present but are also the driving force
which convinces me that this wonderful tradition must survive
in the future."

466. Basket Cup and Cover

Belle Deacon (Athapaskan, b. 1905) is originally from Anvik
but now lives in Grayling, Alaska. She learned birchbark
basketmaking from her grandmother when she was young. "I
watched her, used her scraps, and that's how I learned.”
Deacon isn't certain where all her finished pieces have gone,
noting, "I think I've got lots of baskets all over, some in
Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Ketchikan.” In 1984 Deacon partic¬
ipated in the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and on a number of
occasions she demonstrated her art at the Anchorage Historical
and Fine Arts Museum. She has also taught birchbark basketry
in a workshop in Ketchikan. Speaking of her basketry, Deacon
says, "I invent lots of things. I use mostly old-style stitches
that my grandmother was using. I taught my daughter Daisy
to do basketmaking. Now my little granddaughter age seven
wants to make baskets. She doesn't make fancy stitches like I
do, but she made a pretty good basket and sold it for seven
dollars.”

467. Basket

335

468. Raven the Creator
Paint and wood
6' high

John J. Hoover (Aleut, b. 1919) specializes in wood, bronze,
and stone sculpture, though in the early part of his more than
40 years as an artist he mostly worked in oils. His formal
training included work at the Fine Art School of Painting and
Design in Seattle and stints as artist in residence at the Institute
of American Indian Arts (Santa Fe) and in Asia (Japan, Formosa,
Philippines) with the Air Force school system. However, his
artist inspiration also draws on his life-long experiences as a
fisherman and his extensive reading about his native heritage.
The roster of galleries and museums that have displayed and
purchased Hoover's pieces is extensive and includes: the
Horniman Museum (London), Heard Museum (Phoenix;
"Sculpture I" 1973; first-place awards in 1975 and 1978),
Museum of the Plains Indian (Browning, Montana; one-man
show in 1975), Philbrook Art Center (Tulsa; awards in 1974
and 1975), Anchorage Historical and Fine Arts Museum (1979
and 1985), Smithsonian Institution (1982), and Portland Art
Museum (1987). Large commissions have been forthcoming as
various Percent for Art projects and from corporate clients like
ARCO.

"You know, shamans, who influenced the workings of good
and evil spirits, made symbols of primitive man's fears. And
when they could see their fears take form, they often were no
longer afraid. The idea of the spirit world, trances, the close
relationship of man, animals, and nature, seemed so real and
meaningful I tried to fathom these mysteries.''

Edna Davis Jackson (Tlingit, b. 1950) received a B.F.A. from
Oregon State University in 1980 and a M.F.A. from the Uni¬
versity of Washington three years later. Additionally, she
completed an apprenticeship with Cheryl Samuel in Chilkat
weaving and worked with Chilkat weaver Jennie Thlunaut and
basketmaker Delores Churchill. Selected exhibitions of Jack¬
son's mixed-media works in handmade cast cedar paper include
Anchorage Historical and Fine Arts Museum ("Earth, Fire, and
Fibre XI'' 1980), Sacred Circle Gallery (Seattle: "Indian Artists
of the 1980s" 1983), Native American Arts Gallery (Los An¬
geles: "Native American Artists — California and the West Coast"
1984), Gallery of the American Indian Community House (New
York: "Women of Sweetgrass, Cedar and Sage" 1985), and
Institute of Alaska Native Arts ("Alaskameut" 1986). Important
commissions have come from the Alaska State Museum, the
Anchorage Historical and Fine Arts Museum, and the American
Indian Arts and Crafts Board. For Jackson, "My artwork marks
events in my life. I have a respect for native traditions, but I
refuse to be bound by them in my artwork or my life. My life
has been spent crossing boundaries: one of the first half-breed
kids in the village, obtaining advanced degrees in art, one of
the few contemporary Alaska Native artists who have returned
to village living rather than urban. I like crossing boundaries
in my artwork: making mask forms out of cast cedar paper,
taking traditional geometric basket designs to make large pieces
of artwork using hand-manipulated paper techniques, weaving
traditional patterns in cedar and wool to use in my mixed-
media pieces.

469. Ka-oosh and Coho Salmon
Cast cedar paper
32" X 40" x 5"

"Ka-oosh and Coho Salmon is a portrait of my husband. It
marks twelve years of marriage, as symbolized by the twelve
pages of cedar behind the faces. My husband belongs to the
Coho Salmon Clan, which is marked by the four leaping salmon
on the bottom of the piece.”

336

Nathan P. Jackson (Tlingit, b. 1938) draws much of his artistic
inspiration from his heritage as a member of the Sockeye Clan
on the Raven side of the Chilkoot-Tlingit people. He began
creating woodcarvings and jewelry in traditional Tlingit style
in 1962, but it was not until 1967, after completing courses at
the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and working
with Alaska Indian Arts, Inc., that he became a full-time artist.
Nathan has taught many classes in wood carving and design
at the Alaska State Museum, the Ketchikan Arts Council, the
Juneau-Douglas Community College, the Sheldon Jackson Col¬
lege, the Totem Heritage Center, and in public schools, as well
as classes in dancing at Klawock, Ketchikan, and in British
Columbia. Additionally, he has worked as a consultant for the
Alaska State Museum's totem restoration project and the
University of Alaska Native Arts Upgrade program and has
worked with several apprentices. Nathan's work has been shown
in many places, including the New York World's Fair (1964),
the Alaska State Museum (1971), the University of Alaska
Museum, and various galleries. In particular, he has excelled
in the creation of larger pieces such as restored and original
totem poles and carved panels and screens. His poles are found
in locations throughout Alaska, in Kobe (Japan), Sait Lake City,
London, and New York, and his panels adorn the Ketchikan
International Airport, Peabody Museum of Harvard, Daybreak
Star Arts Center in Seattle, Sealaska Corporation building in
Juneau, Hendrickson Building at the University of Alaska,

470. Haven Mask

Wood, abalone, and hair (1979)

Ketchikan Totem Heritage Center, and Anchorage Historical
and Fine Arts Museum, among other places.

"My goal is to produce high-quality traditional Tlingit work,
staying within the boundaries of the old-style artform.''

Bertha Leavitt (Inupiat, b. 1912) of Barrow has been skin
sewing since she was a little girl and making fancy parkas and
boots for the last 15 or 16 years. She regularly teaches a skin
sewing class in Barrow and is often called upon to give
demonstrations of her craft. All of her work has been made for
native use. In regard to the skin clothing and boots she makes,
Leavitt notes, "I make them the old-fashioned style from long,
long ago.'' The squirrel parka and mukluks shown here won
first place in Suliavut, Barrow's annual arts and crafts show;
they were originally made to be worn in the town's annual
baby contest.

The child's parka is made from the skins of arctic ground
squirrels. The cuffs, bottom trim, and hanging pieces on the
parka are wolverine. The black and white design is calfskin.
The hood ruff is composite; the inner part (not shown) is
wolverine and the outer sunburst is wolf. The mukluks have
crimped soles of bleached ugruk hide with a seal leather border
and seal leather gasket as the seam. The mukluk uppers are
calfskin with a ring of wolverine and a band of red felt around
the top. Vertical lines of red felt trim separate the pieces
comprising the upper boot. A narrow band of black and white
rickrack borders the upper boot where it joins the top of the
ugruk soles. The ties are leather.

471. Squirrel Parka, Calfskin Mukluks

337

James Schoppert (Tlingit, b. 1947) describes the work he has
been producing as an artist since 1973 as "modern minimalist
and abstracted Northwest Coast art, pictographic image paint¬
ings, and masks inspired by Northwest Coast and Eskimo art
traditions.” He began carving on his own but soon began to
take college courses to increase his knowledge of art and
improve his technique; in 1981 he was awarded a M.F.A. degree
in sculpture from the University of Washington. Schoppert's
work has appeared in many exhibitions and galleries, including
the Philbrook Art Center (Tulsa; "What Is American Art?”
1986), Heard Museum (Phoenix: Second Biennial Invitation,
1985), American Contemporary Indian Arts Gallery (San Fran¬
cisco, 1985), Alaska State Museum (1985), Yellowstone Arts
Center (Billings: "New Ideas from Old Traditions” 1985), G. N.
Gorman Museum (Davis, California: 1984), and Sacred Circle
Gallery (Seattle: 1982). His artistic creations grace many per¬
manent collections: Alaska Mutual Bank (Bellevue, Washington),
Alaska State Council on the Arts, Anchorage Community
College, Anchorage Historical and Fine Arts Museum, Calista
Corporation (Anchorage), Sheraton Hotel (Anchorage), the New¬
ark Museum, the University of Alaska (Fairbanks), and the
Washington State Arts Commission Arts Bank. Also, he has
been awarded numerous Percent for Art commissions for pieces
to be displayed in public facilities as varied as the Alaska State
Troopers building, the Sullivan Sports Arena (Anchorage), and
the Ketchikan Pioneer Home.

"My inspiration is drawn from both the Eskimo and Tlingit
art traditions. In using the idiom of Northwest Coast art
conventions. I've divested it of cultural intent, social meaning.

472. Blueberries
Wood, paint (1986)

72" X 72"

and accustomed appearances and substituted freedom of color,
fragmentation, abstraction, and minimalization. It's from this
point I've arrived at these creations, which are both modern
and speak directly to the continuance and maintenance of the
Tlingit cultural identity.”

Joseph E. Senungetuk (Inupiat, b. 1940) began producing
artistic creations in 1964 and has worked in both sculpture
(wood, stone, and metal) and woodcut printmaking. His training
was primarily at the San Francisco Art Institute. Numerous
galleries have exhibited Senungetuk's work, including the
Anchorage Historical and Fine Arts Museum, the Chicago Field
Museum ("Exhibition of Contemporary Pacific Rim Art” 1982),
the Visual Arts Center of Alaska, and the Stonington Gallery
(Anchorage). Commissions have come from the New York
Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, the Bellingham Whatcom
Museum, the University of Alaska (Fairbanks), the Seattle-
Tacoma International Airport, the Alaska State Museum, the
Bethel Corrections Center, the American Indian Arts and Crafts
Board, and the San Francisco American Indian Historical Society.

"Innovation and resourcefulness, care and skill, craftsmanship
and originality, are my big concerns in everything I do.”

473. The Shaman Beckons
Woodcut (1971)
ll"x 16"

338

Delores Sloan (Athapaskan, b. 1938) identifies herself as Irish-
Athapaskan and lives in Fairbanks. She has been doing bead-
work since childhood, having learned from her mother, who
was always busy sewing for the family. Her work has been
exhibited at the University of Alaska Museum, in the Athapaskan
beadwork exhibit "Some Warmer Tone” (1984) and in "A Child
Is Born" (1987—88), an exhibit of art in recognition of children.
Sloan has also shown her beadwork at the Alaska State Fair,
where in 1981 and 1982 she was a grand champion winner.
Her work received national recognition when she was elected
to the Homemakers Hall of Fame in Ralston, Virginia. Sloan is
especially proud of her beaded stole that was presented to
Pope John Paul II when he visited Alaska in 1984. That piece
now resides in the Vatican Museum. Sloan's experimentation
with beadwork has led to beaded portraits of famous individ¬
uals — John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Alaska governor
William Egan. Sloan has taught beadworking at the Anchorage
Historical and Fine Arts Museum, and for the last six years she
has taught beadworking to children in the Fairbanks School
District's Alaska Indian Education Program.

”1 would love to have younger people carry on the tradition
and get ideas from the elders before they all leave us. That's
the most important thing. The elders have so much to teach
us.”

474. Baby Belt

Dolly Spencer (Inupiat, b. 1930) is well known as a maker of
exquisite, detailed traditional-style Eskimo dolls. Originally from
Kotzebue and now a resident of Homer, she learned skin
working and sewing from her mother when she was eight years
old and made her first doll at government school in 1941 or
1942. Spencer uses all traditional materials in her dolls — carved
birchwood heads, skin bodies stuffed with caribou hair, fur and
skin garments sewn with sinew. The right materials are im¬
portant. She says, "I want my people to go back to using sinew
when they sew. I would like someone to teach the younger
generation to learn to strand sinew and twist the sinew for
sewing skin and also how to prepare the skin different ways.
There are five different ways to tan a hide to use. This I tell to
my people in the villages, not to use dental floss [for thread].
It cheapens their work.” Spencer's works have been exhibited
in Homer, Juneau, Fairbanks, Anchorage, and Cincinnati, and
her dolls are in several museums as well as private collections.
Spencer has demonstrated doll-making at the Smithsonian and
taught doll-making to her own people in the village schools.

"This doll represents an Eskimo woman from above the arctic
circle dressed in a fancy parka made of ground squirrel with
badger, coyote, and wolverine ruff and pieced calfskin fancy
work. This lady doll was said by my husband to be 'the best
doll you ever made.' She's traveling in a doll show somewhere."

475. "Above the Arctic Circle Lady Doll" (1982)

339

Agnes Thompson (Aleut, b. 1947) learned basketmaking from
her mother in Atka and has been weaving for some 15 years.
She has participated in basketry workshops in Fairbanks and
Kodiak and regularly demonstrates her weaving at the annual
Native Arts Festival at the Anchorage Historical and Fine Arts
Museum. In 1985 she was one of the curators of the Institute
of Alaska Native Arts basketry exhibit "Interwoven Expres¬
sions." Thompson's work is in the Anchorage Museum's col¬
lection and has been exhibited outside the state at Snow Goose
Associates Gallery in Seattle. Most of her baskets are sold
either to private collectors or through Alaska Native Arts and
Crafts in Anchorage.

"Aleut basketry is considered along with [that of the] Porno
to be one of the most finely woven of the world. It takes a very
long time to weave one. I like to weave, and I'm trying to keep
the Aleut art of basketweaving alive. There are only a handful
left who are weaving on a regular basis."

476. Baskets

340

Appendix I

BEADS

Beads are the universal personal adornment, the
oldest and most widespread art form. In use
since the beginning of the modern human race,
beads and bead materials have long been trade
items. When explorers ventured into unfamiliar
areas or encountered strange peoples, they in¬
variably took beads. Despite their relative iso¬
lation, the Alaskans and Siberians received glass
trade beads from around the world: Venice
(Italy), Bohemia (now part of Czechoslovakia),
China, and possibly Central Asia. Trade beads
were quickly adpated to decorate the human
body and were sewn or fastened onto articles
of everyday and ceremonial use.

Yet it was not always so. Before Europeans
entered the region, beads were made of natural
materials: soft stones, bone, ivory and other
teeth, shells, and amber, some of which are
preserved on objects in this volume. They were
relatively rare. Trade beads accelerated the use
of beads until nearly every class of object from
quiver to labret was decorated with them.

The Russians first brought their beads for this
trade from Europe across Siberia and from China
through the Mongolian border town of Kiakhta,
where they charged no import duties upon them
(Coxe 1780:241). By 1811 they were buying
beads from Yankee (mostly Bostonian) skippers
and the American Fur Company, and by 1839
from the Hudson's Bay Company. After the sale
of Alaska to the United States, the beads in
Siberia still came across land and from China,
while those of Alaska were furnished exclusively
by Americans.

Beads served many functions. Vitus Bering
and other early explorers gave them away as
gifts, to break down initial shyness, and as
symbols of respect. Almost as early, they were
used to barter for essential food and, above all,
for pelts. Soon they became a quasicurrency
and played an important economic role in the
fur trade. In time, they were so common that
they were devalued, although the older beads
were always considered special by the Alaskans
and Siberians.

There is a great variety of glass beads, and
many ways to make them. Some particular
methods can help us identify certain beadmak-
ers, but others are virtually universal and not
diagnostic of one locale.

Venice has been the world's leading bead-
maker for 500 years, and her beads were taken
on virtually all European voyages of discovery.
Most early Venetian beads were made by form¬
ing a glass tube, cutting it into short segments,
and agitating them over heat to smooth their
sharp edges. These drawn beads have their
fabric and inclusions running parallel to their
perforations. The most common of these are
small "seed'' beads, up to 5 millimeters in
diameter, used for most of the beadwork on the
objects illustrated here.

The Bohemians began to outsell the Venetians
in the mid 19th century. They made beads by

AND BEAD TRADE IN THE NORTH PACIFIC

Peter Francis, Jr.

several methods, most notably by molding glass
in two-part molds and either leaving the resulting
seam on or grinding it off.

The oldest and most universal way to make
beads is to wind glass around a wire or metal
rod. This can be done by dipping a rod into hot
glass in a crucible or by melting glass and
allowing it to drip around a wire. Wound beads
have their fabric and inclusions encircling the
perforations. Most wound beads illustrated in
this volume appear to be Chinese, with typical
bubbly glass, large perforations, and uneven
outlines.

Most beads in this collection divide into four
groups based upon museum accession dates and
regions: those from the 1840s, those from 1874
to 1886, those from Alaska between 1897 and
1902, and those from Siberia also from 1897 to
1902. The accession date of an object only hints
at its age. It cannot be more recent than that
date, but how much older it may be is quite
another matter.

Each of these groups has distinctive beads.
Those from the 1840s are similar to the ones
excavated at early (pre-1810) Russian contact
sites in Alaska. They are dominated by irregular
seed beads of semitranslucent medium blue and
white ones coated with clear glass. The larger
beads are all wound and most likely of Chinese
manufacture (figs. 193, 204, 395).

In the next period (1874—86) the seed beads
persist, with the addition of opaque red over
translucent green or other colors ( cornaline d' Al-
lepos) from Venice. The larger beads are also
mostly European: drawn hexagonal beads with
the corners ground off in solid blue, blue on
white, and amber (commonly but inappro¬
priately called Russian beads) from Bohemia,
and wound beads of translucent blue or red that
have been crudely pressed into facets (figs. 48,
202, 203, 406). A few simple wound Chinese
beads are also found at this time.

In the 1897—1902 period there is a divergence
between the Alaskan and Siberian beads. Both
areas have drawn translucent red over whites
(also called cornaline d'Allepos; figs. 213, 299
top right) and cornerless hexagonals, especially
in blue (fig. 62). They also have seed beads, but
they have changed; the older types are now
outnumbered by deep opaque blues, pure whites,
and a variety of other colors, all quite uniform
in size (figs. 315, 341 boots, 418,419). However,
the Siberians had many Chinese wound beads
(fig. 232) and beads wound in a series of four
and later cut apart, often left as doubles (fig.
325 center). Beads are made this way in Herat,
Afghanistan, by a family who migrated from
Bukhara, Uzbekistan, in the early 20th century;
the Siberian beads may have come from Central
Asia.

There is a time lag between the appearances
of most bead types elsewhere in America or
Africa and in the North Pacific. Cornerless hex¬
agonals were first made in the 1820s but are

REGION

not found here until 1874-86. Translucent red-
over-white beads were made from about 1830
but did not reach the North Pacific until 1897-
1902. Bohemian molded biconical beads with
conical holes and many ground facets were being
made by the 1820s but are listed here only in
1897—1902. Uniform seed beads resulted from
the inventions of automatic cutting and sorting
machines in Venice in 1867 but are dated here
only in the 1897-1902 period. Why? Alaska and
Siberia were still relatively isolated in the 19th
century, and beaded objects were in use for
some time before they were acquired by mu¬
seums.

The reuse of old beads is an interesting
phenomenon, especially evident on beadwork.
Many newer pieces have a mixture of older blue
and clear-over-white seed beads alongside new
blues and whites. The older ones often decorated
a distinctive place, such as an outer border. In
some cases, entire beaded panels were cut from
their original garments and added whole onto a
new one, as with the top panel of the apron in
figure 270.

The most historically significant bead of the
region is a medium-sized opaque blue one,
crudely wound into a sphere. These were in the
area very early and may well have been first
brought by Vitus Bering in the 1740s. Three
members of his crew wrote that the beads they
had were Chinese (Golder 1922:99, 147, 272).
They reached Prince William Sound, Alaska,
before the Russians did. Capt. James Cook pur¬
chased a few in 1778 to satisfy himself they
were glass, and Capt. James King described
them: "They set a very great Value [upon them]

. . . They are about the size of a large current
berry, & intended to be (but are not) round"
(Cook 1967:365, 1418). The same bead was in
demand all along the Northwest Coast, as far
south as the Columbia River, and enjoyed long-
lasting popularity. It is found on a number of
objects, usually accorded a place of honor (figs.
204, 232, 296).

Another bead with possible historical refer¬
ences was roughly wound and pressed into
facets (figs. 324 earrings, 361). It is found on a
few American sites from 1700 to 1890 (Brain
1979:111, type WIIA7) and answers best to
those called garnets by Carl Merck of the Billings
Expedition of 1788—92.

Among the most notable specimens of bead
use in this exhibit is the beaded cap from Kodiak
Island (fig. 48), with its wealth of beads that
reflect nearly the whole later trade of the region.
The triple belt of 363 caribou front teeth alter¬
nating with two rows of the prized old wound
blue beads (fig. 296) was purchased in 1939 but
was even then recognized as an outstanding
older piece (a Seattle dealer sold it for $125).

341

Appendix II

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Fig Page Caption title / (culture/artist)

Crossroads of Continents: Beringian Oecumene

Cultures of the North Pacific

Alaskan Native Costumes (Postels?)

Anthropological Collecting, 1840)1901

Bentwood Hunting Hat (Bering Sea Esk.

Quivers and Arrows (Chukchi/
Athapaskan)

Koryak Egg Gatherers

Koryak Shaman

Chilkat Tunic (Tlingit)

Eskimo Trade Fair

Engraved Winged Object (Old Bering
Sea)

1 1

Lime Mortar (Haida)

Ethnic

Connections Across Bering Strait

Birdskin Parka (St. Lawr. Is. Eskimo)

Ivory Bolas (Norton Sound Eskimo)

"Summer/Winter Habitations. .

(Webber)

Snow Goggles (Koryak/Bering Sea Esk.)

"Natives of Oonalaschaka. . (Webber)

Trade and War: Drillbow (C. Nome Esk.)

Tobacco Pipe and Pouch (Even)

Tobacco Pipe (Chukchi)

Siberian Curios (Siberian Native)

Peoples of the

Amur and Maritime Regions

Nanai Woman's Coat

Nanai Family Group

Wood Box (Nivkhi)

Nivkhi Woodworking

Knife and Sheath (Nivkhi)

Bear Festival Bowl (Nivkhi)

Festival Spoon and Amulet (Nivkhi)

Koryak and Itelmen: Dwellers of the Smoking Coast

Imported Technology (Koryak)

Koryak Dancer

Koryak Winter Village

Spinner (Koryak)

Koryak Jewelry

Even:

Reindeer Herders of Eastern Siberia

Pendants (Even)

Even Woman

Apron (Even)

Chukchi: Warriors and Traders of Chukotka

Chukchi Woman and Child

Chukchi Travelers

Pouch (Chukchi)

"Tchouktchis. . ." (Choris)

Embroidered Summer Boots (Chukchi)

Eskimos: Hunters of the Frozen Coasts

Eskimo Dancer

Baleen Basket (N. Alaskan Eskimo)

Asian Eskimo Village (Plover Bay)

Retrieval Hook (Bering Sea Eskimo)

Personal Ornamentation (Ber. Sea Esk.)

“Beautiful Things" (Bering Sea Eskimo)

Ritual Hunting Headgear (Ber. Sea Esk.)

Beaded Dance Headdress (Koniag
Eskimo)

"Woman of Ykamoka Island. . ."
(Tikhanov)

"Happy Fellow" (Koniag Eskimo)

Gunnelboard and Paddle (Koniag

Eskimo)

Aleut:

Islanders of the North Pacific

Aleut Hunter

"Oonalashka Native Codfishing" (Elliott)

Kayak Suction Pump (Aleut)

Aleut Man and Assemblage (Levashev)

Gutskin Raincoat (Aleut)

Grass Basket (Aleut)

Gutskin Hat (Aleut)

Tlingit: People

of the Wolf and Raven

Tlingit Chief

Trap Sticks (Tlingit)

Goathorn Spoons (Tlingit/Haida)

Personal Ornaments (Tlingit)

"Cape and Rattle of Kolosh."

(Mikhailov)

Tobacco Pipes (Tlingit)

Raven Rattle (Tlingit)

Sea Lion Headdress (Tlingit)

Northern Athapaskans: People of the Deer

Athapaskan Hunter

Fort Yukon Indian

The Story of Russian America

"Barabaras. . .Koloshi. .

(Voznesenskii)

Russian Double-headed Eagle Crest

North Alaskan Eskimos, Cape Smith

Map of. . First Bering Exp. (1725-30)

Ivory Sea Otter with Pup (Aleut)

Early Voyages of Exploration to Alaska

War Shield (Aleut)

Harpoon Arrow for Sea Otters (Koniag)

Grigorii Shelikov (1747-1795)

Aleks. Baranov (Tikhanov)

"View of Pavlovskii Harbor.

(Shields)

"Portrait of. . Radian. ” (Tikhanov)

War Helmet (Tlingit)

Painted Hide Armor (Tlingit)

Baranov's Chain Mail Shirt (Russian)

Novo-Arkhangel'sk Harbour (Mikhailov)

"Inhabitants of the Aleut. . .” (Choris)

Gutskin Cape. . (Aleut or Koniag)

Orthodox Traveling Icon (Even)

Woven Grass Purse (Aleut)

Triptych Icon (Russ. fr. Aleutian Is.)

Notched Calendar (Even)

Treasures by the Neva: The Russian Collections

Museum of Anthr. and Ethnog.. Leningr.

Iu. Lisianskii; ivory fig.(Koniag/BSE)

Tlingit Sketch (I. Vozn ); pouch (Aleut)

L. A. Zagoskin; tobacco box (BSE)

Rattle Panel (Tlingit)

"Sand Piper/Woodcock" Mask (Koniag
Esk.)

Woman's Dance Coat (Koryak)

Baird's

Naturalists: Smithsonian Collectors in Alaska

Spencer F. Baird

Robert Kennicott

100

Sealing Stool (Anderson River Eskimo)

101

William H. Dali

102

James G. Swan

103

Crest Hat (Haida)

104

Sketch of a Tlingit House (Swan)

105

Shaman's Whale Tooth Amulet (Tlingit)

106

Edward W. Nelson

107

Man's Ground Squirrel Parka (BSE)

The American

Museum's Jesup North Pacific Expedition

108

Morris K. Jesup

109

Franz Boas

110

Haida Village (Swanton)

1 1 1

Shaman's Apron (Yukaghir)

112

Bogoraz on the Kolyma River

1 13

100

Bogoraz. the Revolutionary; telegram

114

101

Sled Travel in Siberia

115

101

Jochelson Camp in Stanovoi Mountains

116

102

Dina Brodsky in Native Hut

117

103

Expedition Freight at Mariinsky Post

118

103

Rafting Down the Korkodon

Young

Laufer

on The Amur

1 19

104

Berthold Laufer

Beringia: An Ice Age View

120

107

Vegetation History in Alaska (pollen)

121

108

The Bering Land Bridge. . .(map)

122

108

Composite Lance Head (Upper
Paleolithic)

123

110

Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta

Ancient Peoples of The North Pacific Rim

124

111

Arctic Dentition (McKenzie Eskimo)

125

1 14

Old World — New World Dental
Relationship

126

115

Western North Amer. Dental
Relationships

127

115

North Pacific Dental Relationships

Prehistory of Siberia and The Bering Sea

128

117

Cultures and Sites of the N. Pacific. . .

129

118

Early Man in Siberia (Upper Paleolithic)

130

118

Takoe 11: Proto-Paleoindian?

131

119

Early Man in Alaska (Clovis/Folsom)

132

119

Paleoarctic Tradition (Denali Complex)

133

120

"Nefertiti" of the Amur (Siber. Neol.)

134

120

Sakhalin Harpoons (Neolithic)

135

121

Boat Model (Old Bering Sea Culture)

136

121

Hat Ornaments (Old Bering Sea Culture)

137

122

Old Bering Sea Harpoon

138

122

Winged Objects (Old Bering Sea

Culture)

139

123

Ancient Hunting Magic (Old Bering Sea)

140

123

Style Shift in Eskimo Art

141

124

Containers and Float Gear (OBS

Culture)

142

124

Women's Work (Old Bering Sea Culture)

143

125

Pottery (Old Bering Sea Culture)

144

125

Shaman's Pottery Paddles (OBS Culture)

145

126

Shaman's Burial (Old Bering Sea

Culture)

146

126

Burial Mask (Old Bering Sea Culture)

147

126

Antler Soul Catcher (Ipiutak Culture)

148

127

Masked Spirits (Old Bering Sea Culture)

149

127

Ipiutak Burial Mask

150

128

Ivory Ornaments (Old Bering Sea
Culture)

151

128

Wrist Guards (Punuk Culture)

152

129

Tattooed Maskette (Old Bering Sea/
Punuk)

153

129

Pegtymel' Rock Art (Prehistoric
Chukotka)

Prehistory of Alaska's Pacific Coast

154

130

Seated Figure Bowl (Prehist. Br.

Columb.)

155

131

Bone Ornament (Prehistoric, Alaska)

156

132

Ornamented Stone Lamp (Kachemak
Culture)

157

133

Kachemak Carvings (Kodiak Island)

158

134

Prehistoric Koniag Villages. . Kodiak Is.

159

134

A Koniag Settlement on the Karluk

River

160

134

Koniag Masks and Figurines

161

135

Koniag Labrets

162

135

Pebble People (Koniag)

163

136

Miniature Masks (Koniag)

164

136

Dance Mask and Attachments (early
Aleut)

165

136

Birthing Amulet (Koniag)

166

137

Harpoon Head (Prehistoric Aleut)

167

138

Eye Amulet (British Columbia)

168

138

Raven Amulet (British Columbia)

169

138

Prehistoric Carvings from Pr. Rupert

Hbr.

170

139

Late Prehistoric NWC Stone Carving

171

140

Petroglyph (Cast) (Tsimshian)

172

140

Whale Bone Club (Prince Rupert)

Raven's

Creatures

173

141

Biological Productivity in the N. Pacific

174

142

Walrus Herd on the Chukotka Coast

Many Tongues—

-Ancient Tales

175

145

Languages of the Greater N. Pacific

176

145

Na-Dene Language Group

177

146

Eskimo-Aleut Language Family

178

147

Chukotko-Kamchatkan Language Group

179

148

Tungusic Language Family

Maritime Economies of the North Pacific Rim

180

150

Tunghak. Keeper of the Game (B.S.
Esk.)

181

152

Hunting Magic; hunt, hat (Aglemiut/
Aleut)

182

152

Guardian of the Nets (Koryak)

183

153

Sculpin Headdress (Tlingit)

184

154

Ocean Fishing (Tlingit; Elliott)

185

155

Ice-Fishing (Koryak/Chukchi)

186

155

Lures (Western Alaska Eskimo)

187

156

Canoe Model (Tlingit)

188

156

Northwest Coast Canoe and Aleut
Kayaks

189

156

War Canoe (Tlingit)

190

157

Steering Paddle (Haida)

191

157

Sea Mammal Magic (Koniag?)

192

159

Kayak Models (Koryak/Nort. Sd. Esk./
Ale.)

192a

158

Kayak Construction Diagram

192b

159

Distribution Map

193

160

Throwing Boards (BSE/Aleut/Koniag)

194

160

Throwing Darts (Aleut/Bering Sea
Eskimo)

195

161

Harpoon Technology (W. Alaskan
Eskimo)

342

196

161

Lances (W. Alaskan Eskimo)

197

162

Hunting on the Ice (W. Alaskan Eskimo)

198

162

"Wife" and "Husband" Charms (BS
Eskimo)

199

162

Walrus and Sealing Harpoons (W. Ak,
Esk.)

200

164

Seal and Pike Spirit Hats (Koniag/BSE)

201

164

Bering Sea Hunting Hats (BS Eskimo)

202

164

Katmai Hunting Hat (Koniag Eskimo?)

203

165

Painted Visor (Aleut)

204

165

Painted Hunting Hat (Aleut)

205

165

Bentwood Hunting Hat (Ber. Sea

Eskimo)

206

165

Spruce-Root Hunting Hat (Chugach or
Kon.)

207

167

Spring-Summer Ranges of Whale

Species

208

167

The Umialik: N. Ak. Esk. Whaling

Captain

209

168

Ceremony and Magic: the Esk. Whale
Cult

210

168

Koryak and Eskimo Whaling

211

168

Line Weight and Blade. . (N. Ak. Esk.)

212

169

Ceremonial Baleen Bucket (N. Ak. Esk.)

213

169

Umialik's Headband (N. Ak. Esk.)

214

169

Whaling Charms (N Ak. Esk.)

215

170

Whaling Canoe Model (Makah)

216

170

Whaling Float (Makah)

217

171

Nootka Whaler's Shrine

218

172

"Aleutians Striking Humpback

Whales.

219

172

Whale Dart (Aleut)

Hunters, Herders,

Trappers, and Fishermen

220

173

Caribou Spirit (Bering Sea Eskimo)

221

174

Button Blanket (Tsimshian)

222

174

"Interior or 'Stick' Indians. . ." (Elliot)

223

175

A Tsimshian Shaman's Outfit

224

175

Grease Bowl (Tlingit)

225

176

Arrows and Shaft Straightener (Chuk/
Esk)

226

176

Bows (Koniag/Chugach Esk.)

227

177

Siberian Quivers

228

178

Reindeer Herders of Siberia

229

179

Alaskan Reindeer Herders

230

180

Dog Sledding

231

181

Skis (Itelmen)

232

182

Reindeer Riders (Evenk or Yukaghir)

Economic Patterns

i in Northeastern Siberia

233

183

Economic Systems of Siberia and Alaska

234

184

Koryak Bringing Home a Beluga Whale

235

185

Chukchi Duck Hunters at Cape
Wankarem

236

186

Russian Firearms (Koryak/Chukchi)

237

187

Fox Trap (Chukchi)

238

188

Koryak Women Cleaning Fish

239

189

Home of a Rich Reindeer Koryak

240

190

Markovo Post (Russian settlement)

Economic Patterns in Alaska

241

192

"Eskimo Whaling and Walrus Camp . ."

242

193

Ivory Drill Bow (Alaskan Eskimo)

Dwellings, Settlements, and Domestic Life

243

194

The Koryak Home and. Sacred
Fireboard

244

195

Northern Simplicity: Whale Bone Bucket

245

195

Northwest Coast Elaborations (Tli./Hai.)

246

196

Eskimo Graves at Razboinski, Lower
Yukon

247

197

North Alaskan Eskimo Winter House

248

198

Ulu (Woman's Knife) (Bering Sea

Eskimo)

249

198

Bering Sea Eskimo Winter House

250

198

Toys for Learning

251

199

Aleut Winter House

252

200

Aleut Grass Wallets

253

200

Koryak Winter House Interior

254

201

Maritime Koryak Winter House

255

202

Summer Camp at Cape Lisburne

256

202

North Alaskan Eskimo Skin Tent

257

202

The Even Tent

258

203

The Iaranga . . Sleeping Chamber
(Chuk.)

259

203

Toys (Chukchi/Tlingit)

260

204

Master of the Herd (Reindeer Koryak)

261

205

Nivkhi Summer House on the Amur
River

262

205

Athapaskan Indian House

263

205

Gambling Sticks (Tlingit)

264

206

Tlingit Winter House

265

206

Grease Bowl (Haida)

266

207

House Screen (Haida)

267

207

Spoons (Tlingit)

Needles and Animals: Women's Magic

268

209

Koniag Birdskin Coat (Koniag Eskimo)

269

210

Snow Beater (Chukchi)

270

210

Beaded and Embroidered Apron (Even)

271

21 1

Reindeer Koryak Mother and

Children. . .

272

211

Infant's Combination Suit (Chukchi)

273

212

Needlecases

274

213

Tools of the Seamstress

275

213

Beaded Boots and Leggings (Koryak)

276

214

Eskimo Woman's Parka (North Alaskan
Esk.)

277

214

Eskimo Dress Boots (North Alaskan

Esk.)

278

214

Koryak Funeral Coat

279

215

Clothing Patterns

280

216

Eskimo Sewing Bag (Bering Sea Eskimo)

281

216

Chilkat Blanket

282

216

"Indian of Mulgrave" (Tomas de Suria)

283

216

Eskimo Labrets

284

217

Geometric Woven Blanket (Tlingit)

285

218

Bark Shredder (Tlingit)

286

218

Tlingit Blanket Weaving. . .at Klukwan

287

219

Paper Applique Pattern (Nivkhi)

288

219

Amur River Fishskin Coat (Nanai)

289

219

Tunic (Tlingit)

290

219

Dance Apron and Leggings (Tlingit)

291

220

A Close Look at Decorative Techniques

292

221

From Guts to Garment (St. Lawr. Is.

Esk.)

293

222

Koryak Coat Styles

294

223

Beaded Bands

295

223

Joints and Skeletal Motifs

296

224

Caribou Teeth Belt (Bering Sea Eskimo)

297

224

Tattoos of Womanhood

298

225

Athapaskan Tunic

299

225

Koryak and Eskimo Ornaments

300

226

Dress Gloves (Even)

301

226

Girls Dancing (Chukchi)

War

and Trade

302

227

Asiatic Eskimo Warrior

303

228

Provisional Political Map. . .(1800-1825)

304

229

Athapaskan Indian Weaponry

305

230

"Battlefield Near Point Barrow"

306

230

Plate and Rod Armor (N. Ak. Eskimo/
Aleut)

307

231

The Art of the Armorer (Koryak/Nivkhi)

308

231

Tlingit Armor

309

232

"A Kolosh Warrior. . (Tikhanov)

310

232

Tlingit Helmets and Visor

311

232

Tlingit Daggers

312

232

Spear (Tlingit)

313

234

War Club (Tsimshian ?)

314

235

"Tuski and Mahlemuts Trading for Oil"

315

235

Tobacco Pipes (Chukchi/Bering Sea
Eskimo)

316

236

North Pacific Trade Systems
(1775-1900)

317

237

Pipe Inlaid with Abalone (Tlingit)

318

238

Aniui Trade Fair

319

238

Tea Brick (Chinese)

320

238

Tobacco and Snuff Boxes (N. Ak./BSE
Esk.)

321

239

Koryak Tobacco Paraphernalia

322

239

American Whalers (Scammon)

323

240

A 2.000 Mile Journey (Northern Ojibwa)

324

240

Alaskan Bead and Dentalium Shell
Jewelry

325

240

Chukchi Beads

Guardians and Spirit-Masters of Siberia

326

241

Igor Shamanov, Shaman (Yukaghir)

327

242

Kelet Myth — tusk (Chukchi)

328

242

Ancestor Guardian and Sacr. Bowl
(Chuk.)

329

242

The Koryak Raven Game

330

243

Koryak Child's Cremation

331

244

Chukchi Guardians

332

245

Man's Funeral Cap (Koryak)

333

246

Tasseled Shaman's Hat (Yukaghir)

334

247

Hat of a "Transformed" Shaman
(Yukaghir)

335

247

Antlered Shaman's Hat (Evenk)

336

248

Toy Drum (Chukchi)

337

248

Magic Surgery (Chukchi)

338

249

Sun-Worm and Divining Guardian (Kor/
Chuk)

339

249

Shaman's Leggings (Even)

340

249

Divining Pouch (Chukchi)

341

251

Man's Cremation Costume (Koryak)

342

252

Koryak Dog Sacrifice

343

253

Eider Duck Ceremony

344

253

Keretkun Net and Prayer Paddle
(Chukchi)

345

254

Whale Festival Altar Objects (Koryak)

346

255

Masked Koryak Women

Eye of the Dance:

Spiritual Life of the Bering Sea Eskimo

347

256

Black Bear Inua Mask (Bering Sea
Eskimo)

348

257

Grizzly Bear Spirit Realm (BS Esk.)

349

258

Fish Club (Bering Sea Eskimo)

350

258

Walrus-Man (North Alaskan Eskimo)

351

259

Transformation Mask (Bering Sea
Eskimo)

352

259

Seal Inua Ornaments (Bering Sea
Eskimo)

353

260

Lunar Tunghak (Bering Sea Eskimo)

354

261

Conventionalized Animal Face (BS Esk.)

355

261

Ornamented Sewing Gear (BS Eskimo)

356

262

Child's Doll (Bering Sea Eskimo)

357

262

Storyknife (Bering Sea Eskimo)

358

263

Reality, Masked — Spirit Ornaments
(BSE)

359

263

Ivory Kayak Ornaments (Bering Sea
Eskimo)

360

264

Eskimo Floatboard and Paddles (BS
Eskimo)

361

265

Beaded Ermine Dance Headdress
(Koniag)

362

265

Dance Fans (Bering Sea Eskimo)

363

266

Spotted Mask (Bering Sea Eskimo)

364

266

Nucleated. . .Dance Fans (Bering Sea
Esk.)

365

268

Festival Dress (Bering Sea Eskimo)

366

268

The Bladder Festival (Norton Sound
Esk.)

367

268

Festival Masks (Norton Sound Eskimo)

368

270

Bird Mask (Koniag Eskimo)

369

270

Dance Rattle (Koniag Eskimo)

Potlatch

Ceremonialism on the Northwest Coast

370

271

Shaman's Rattle (Tlingit)

371

271

Tlingit Curing Ceremony/Rattle

372

272

Shaman's Masks (Tlingit)

373

272

Club and Necklace Amulets (Tlingit)

374

273

Pendant Amulets (Tlingit)

375

274

Bear and Duck Rattles (Haida/Tlingit)

376

275

Shaman's Bow (Tlingit)

377

275

"Kolosh Indians. .Sitka" (Voznesenskii)

378

275

Shaman's Rattle (Haida)

379

277

Potlatch Gathering (Tlingit)

380

277

Copper (Tlingit)

381

277

Appliquaa Tunic (Haida)

382

278

Crest Headdress (Tlingit)

383

278

Nagunaks Crest Hat — killer whale
(Tsim.)

384

279

"The Funeral of the One-Armed

Kolosh. . ."

385

280

Crest Headdress (Haida)

386

281

Whale House (Tlingit)

387

281

Chief s Chest (Tlingit)

Art and Culture Change at the Tlingit-Eskimo Border

388

282

Spear Thrower (Tlingit)

389

282

Grease Bowl (Chugach Eskimo)

390

283

Chugach Grease Bowl

391

284

Painted Chest (Koniag or Chugach)

392

285

Basket (Chugach Eskimo)

393

285

Horn Spoons (Chugach Eskimo/Haida)

394

286

Spruce-Root Crest Hat (Tlingit)

395

287

Beaded Spruce-Root Hat (Tlingit)

396

287

Painted Spruce-Root Hat (Tlingit)

397

288

Diagram of One-Step Structure

398

289

Diagram of Two-Step Structure

399

290

Carved Chest (Tlingit)

400

290

Diagram of Tlingit Hat

401

290

Diagram of Pacific Eskimo Hat

402

291

Painted Spruce-Root Hat (Chugach?)

403

291

Diagram of Pacific Eskimo Hat

404

291

Diagram of a Eskimo Hat (Koniag?)

405

292

Painted Spruce-Root Hat (Chugach
Eskimo)

406

293

Decorated Spruce-Root Hat (Koniag
Eskimo)

407

293

Diagram of Pacific Eskimo Spruce Root
Hat

408

293

Woven Spruce-Root Hat (Chugach
Eskimo)

Comparative Art of the North Pacific Rim

409

294

Ceremonial Raven Pipe (Tlingit)

410

295

Sea Lion War Helmet (Tlingit)

411

295

Ritual Hunting Helmet (Alaska
Peninsula?)

412

295

Killerwhale Fish Club (Tlingit)

413

296

Embossed Birchbark Tray (Nivkhi)

414

296

Woman's Embroidered Fishskin Robe
(Nanai)

415

296

Embroidered Fishskin Boots (Nanai)

343

416

296

Woman's Embroidered Mittens (Nanai)

433

305

Beaded Shirt (Ingalik Athapaskan)

417

297

Tasseled Shaman's Coat (Yukaghir)

434

305

Raven's Footprint (Norton Sound

418

297

Decorated Cradle Back (Yukaghir)

Eskimo)

419

297

Embroidered and Beaded Pouch (Even)

435

306

Transformation Mask (Bering Sea

420

298

Wrestling Bears (Koryak)

Eskimo)

421

298

Siberian Design Sampler

436

306

Tunghak Inua Mask (Bering Sea Eskimo)

422

299

Winter Boots (Asian Eskimo)

437

306

Plaque Mask (Bering Sea Eskimo)

423

299

Pouch Design (Asiatic Eskimo/Koryak)

438

307

Spirit Mask (Ingalik Athapaskan)

424

300

Siberian Wood and Leather Masks

439

307

Ingalik Plaque Mask (Athapaskan)

425

301

Eskimo Mask (North Alaskan Eskimo)

440

307

Death Mask (Aleut)

426

301

Skeletized Animals (Bering Sea Eskimo)

441

307

Pacific Eskimo Mask (Koniag Eskimo)

427

302

Effigy Dish (Bering Sea Eskimo)

442

307

Shaman's Mask (Tlingit)

428

302

Painted Hunting Visor (Aleut)

443

308

"History of a Year of the Chukchi"

429

303

Klukwan Potlatch Costumes

444

308

Pictographic Board and Gorget

430

303

Painted Skin Robe (Haida)

445

308

Box Sculpture and Pictographic Art

431

304

Button Blanket (Haida)

446

309

Boxlid Art (Bering Sea Eskimo)

432

304

Silver Bracelet (Haida)

447

310

Pictographic Drillbow (Bering Sea Esk 9)

448 310

449 311

450 311

451 312

T'ao-T'ieh Mask (Shang Dynasty, China)
Chilkat Blanket (Tlingit)

Composite Shell Mask (Shang, China)
Serpent, Soul Catcher, Sisiutl (Tsim.)

Siberian Peoples: A Soviet View

452 314

453 316

454 317

455 318

Butchering a Whale at Uelen, Chukotka
Ivan Segutegin, a Chukchi Ivory Carver
Winter Scene of Uelen Village
Asiatic Eskimo Dance Group "Uelen"

Alaska Natives Today

456 320 Eskimo Women Fishing for Whitefish

457 322 Eskimos at Government School

Alaska Native Arts in the Twentieth Century
458 328 Aleut Ivory Carver's Tools

(459 to 476: Native Alaskan Artists)

Appendix III

Exhibition Checklist

AMNH: American Museum of Natural History (New York)

0-239

Fig. 228, Reindeer harness, Chukchi
acc. 1894, Bering Sea coast, Siberia
18 cms (1; bit), bone, leather
16-9930

Fig. 217, Human figure. Nootka
Hunt. acc. 1904, Vancouver Island. B.C.

99 cms (h). wood (red cedar)

16-9968

Fig, 217, Whale carving. Nootka
Hunt, acc. 1904, Vancouver Island. B.C.

149 cms (1), wood (red cedar)

60-3552a.b

Fig. 422, Boots, Asiatic Eskimo

Bogoras, col. 1900-01. Indian Point, Siberia

40 cms (h). dehaired sealskin, caribou leg fur. leather, yarn

60-3678

Fig. 423, Bag. Asiatic Eskimo

Bogoras, col. 1900-01, St. Lawrence Island, Alaska

34 cms (w). sealskin, cloth

60.1- 453

Fig 147. Shaman's sucking tube. Ipiutak
Larsen and Rainey, col. 1939-41. Pt. Hope. Alaska
38 cms (1). antler

60.1- 7713a-k

Fig. 149, Burial mask, Ipiutak

Larsen and Rainey, col 1939-41, Pt. Hope. Alaska

31 cms (h), ivory

70-387

Fig. 333, Shaman's hat, Yukaghir
Cottle, acc. 1907. Siberia

61 cms (h), reindeer skin, dyed seal pup fur, beads, textile,
dog(?) fur trim, brass, hair embroidery
70-620a.b

Fig. 416, Mittens, Nanai

Laufer. col. 1898-99. Amur River region, Siberia
26 cms (1), cloth, fur, thread, brass buttons
70-621a.b

Fig. 415, Fishskin boots, Nanai
Laufer, col. 1898-99. Amur River region. Siberia
33 cms (h), reindeer skin, dyed fishskin. cotton cloth, cotton
thread
70-628

Fig. 288, Fishskin coat, Nanai

Laufer. col. 1898-99. Amur River region, Siberia

104 cms (1). dyed and undyed fishskin, thread

70-870a.b

Fig. 23. Wood box, Nivkhi

Laufer. col. 1898-99, Amur River region. Siberia

17 cms (h), wood, leather

70-871

Fig. 24, Tray. Nivkhi

Laufer, col. 1898-99. Amur River region. Siberia

51 cms (I), wood

70-876

Fig. 413, Birchbark tray, Nivkhi

Laufer, col. 1898)99. Amur River region, Siberia

25 cms (w), embossed birchbark

70-881

Fig. 24, Drill, Nivkhi

Laufer. col. 1898-99, Amur River region, Siberia

56 cms (1). wood, iron

70-891

Fig. 27. Bear festival spoon, Nivkhi

Laufer. col. 1898-99, Amur River region. Siberia

28 cms (1), wood

70-1205

Fig. 27. Amulet, Nivkhi

Laufer. col. 1898-99, Amur River region, Siberia
9 cms (1), wood

70- 1936b

Fig. 287, Paper pattern, Nivkhi
Laufer (?). Amur River region. Siberia
36 cms (1), painted paper
70-1951

Fig. 423, Bag. Koryak

Bogoras, col. 1900-01, Northern Kamchatka. Siberia
12 cms (1), Tanned hide, beads, fur, cloth, hair, thread
70-2203

Fig. 421, Embroidered belt, Itelmen
Bogoras, col. 1900-01. Sedanka, Siberia
82 cms (1). leather, leather appliqub
70-2723

Fig. 15. Snow goggles. Koryak
Jochelson. 1900-01. Gizhiga. Siberia
15 cms (w). wood, leather
70-2737

Fig. 210, Whaling harpoon head. Koryak
Jochelson. col. 1900-01, Siberia

38 cms (1), chert blade, antler head, larch gum. walrus thong.

wood

70-2752

Fig. 182. "Guardian of Nets” figure. Koryak
Jochelson. col. 1900-01. Siberia

22 cms (1), wood, grass
70-2856

Fig. 345. Whale Festival dish. Koryak
Jochelson. col. 1900-01, Kuel, Siberia
17 cms (1). wood
70-2859

Fig. 243. Sacred fireboard, Koryak
W. Jochelson, col. 1900-01. Siberia
43 cms (1). wood
70-2860a.b.c

Fig. 243, Spindle, bow. mouthpiece of fireboard. Koryak
Jochelson. col. 1900-01. Siberia
46 cms (fspindle). wood, leather, bone
70-2887a.b

Fig. 341, Cremation boots. Koryak

Jochelson, col. 1900-01. Mikino. Siberia

24 cms (1). reindeer fawn legskins. dyed hide, trade cloth.

sinew, beads
70-2888

Fig. 341. Cremation coat. Koryak
Jochelson, col. 1900-01. Mikino. Siberia
132 cms (1). reindeer skin, dyed seal pup fur, sealskin, yarn,
hair embroidery, silk thread, bead, dog fur
70-2992

Fig. 345. Whale carving. Koryak
Jochelson. col. 1900-01, Kamenskoe. Siberia

23 cms (1). wood
70-3040

Fig. 115, Doll. Koryak

Jochelson. col. 1900-01. Kamenskoe. Siberia

22 cms (h). wood, skin

70-3150

Fig. 293. Carved pattern stamp. Koryak
Jochelson. col. 1900-01. Kamenskoe. Siberia
8 cms (1). wood
70-3151

Fig. 293. Carved pattern stamp. Koryak
Jochelson, col. 1900-01. Kamenskoe. Siberia

6 cms (1), wood
70-3152

Fig. 293, Carved pattern stamp. Koryak
Jochelson. 1900-01. Kamenskoe. Siberia

7 cms (1). wood
70-3153

Fig. 293. Carved pattern stamp. Koryak
Jochelson. col. 1900-01, Kamenskoe, Siberia
7 cms (1). wood

70-3187

Fig. 293. Reindeer skin coat, Koryak

Jochelson, 1900-01. Kamenskoe. Siberia

115 cms (1). reindeer skin, designs stamped in dye

70-3216a,b

Fig 299. Beaded earrings. Koryak
Jochelson. col. 1900-01. Talovka. Siberia
28 cms (1), iron, beads, sinew
70-3234a.b

Fig. 341. Leggings of cremation suit. Koryak
Jochelson. col. 1900-01, Talovka. Siberia
63 cms (1). reindeer leg skins, sealskin, yarn, dyed seal pup
fur. beads, cloth, sinew
70-3240

Fig. 210. Boat charm. Koryak

Jochelson. col. 1900-01, Kamenskoe. Siberia

21 cms (h), wood

70-3246

Fig. 345, Figure. Koryak

Jochelson, col. 1900-01. Kamenskoe. Siberia

10 cms (h). wood, grass
70-3278

Fig. 192. Kayak model. Koryak

Jochelson. col. 1900-01. Greater Itkana, Siberia

45 cms (1). gutskin. wood, sinew

70-3314

Fig. 185. Ice-fishing rod, Koryak
Jochelson. col. 1900-01. Greater Itkana. Siberia
86 cms (1), wood, sinew, ivory, bone, lead
70-3441

Fig. 28, Knife. Koryak

Jochelson, col. 1900-01. Kushka. Siberia

28 cms (1). iron, wood

70-3543

Fig. 236. Cutting board, Koryak
Jochelson. col. 1900-01. Kushka. Siberia
42 cms (1), wood
70-3590

Fig. 299. Beaded headband. Koryak
Jochelson. col. 1900-01. Kushka. Siberia
18 cms (1), leather, beads, brass, sinew
70-3594

Fig. 338. "Sun Worm” charm. Koryak
Jochelson, col. 1900-01, Kushka, Siberia

1 1 cms (h). hide, fur. beads, cloth
70-3655a.b

Fig. 28, Large knife and sheath. Koryak

Jochelson, col. 1900-01. Kushka. Siberia

53 cms (Lknife), iron, brass, whalebone, sealskin sheath

70-3684

Fig. 32, Iron pendant. Koryak
Jochelson. col. 1900-01. Kushka. Siberia
6 cms (dia). iron
70-3753a.b

Fig. 299. Ear ornaments with whale tails. Koryak
Jochelson. col. 1900-01. Kushka. Siberia
18 cms (1). iron, leather
70-3822

Fig. 307. Helmet, Koryak

Jochelson. col. 1900-01. Kushka. Siberia

13 cms (h). iron

70-3846

Fig. 319. Tea brick, Chinese
Jochelson, col. 1900-01. Kushka. Siberia
23 cms (1). compressed tea powder
70-3892

Fig. 293. Ceremonial coat. Koryak
Jochelson. col. 1900-01, Kushka. Siberia
96 cms (1). dyed seal pup fur. dyed reindeer skin, hair
embroidery, cotton thread, cloth, dog fur trim, leather
70-3938

Fig. 424. Mask. Koryak

344

Jochelson. col. 1900-01. Kushka. Siberia
36 cms (h), wood, sinew, pigment (charcoal?)

70-5123

Fig. 321. Pipe. Koryak

Jochelson. Col. 1900-01. Naiachan. Siberia

21 cms (L). inlaid brass
70-5185a.b

Fig. 275. Fur leggings, Koryak
Jochelson. col. 1900-01. Naiachan. Siberia
71 cms (1). Reindeer leg skins, beads
70-5200

Fig. 232. Cradle. Evenk or Yukaghir
Jochelson, col. 1900-01. Naiachan. Siberia
60 cms (1), hide, beads, wood, cloth
70-5222

Fig. 232. Saddle bag. Evenk or Yukaghir
Jochelson. col. 1900-01. Naiachan. Siberia
127 cms (w). reindeer skin, beads, hair embroidery
70-5260a.b

Fig. 275. Boots. Koryak

Jochelson. col. 1900-01. Kushka. Siberia

38 cms (h). reindeer skin, beads, cloth

70-5264

Fig. 232, Reindeer saddle. Evenk or Yukaghir
Jochelson. col. 1900-01. Naiachan. Siberia
44 cms (L). leather, wood, beads, cordage
70-5601a

Fig. 34. Jacket, Even
Bogoras. col. 1900-01. Markovo, Siberia
99 cms (1). reindeer skin, beads, hair embroidery, dyed seal
and dog fur trim
70-5601c.d
Fig. 34. Boots. Even
Bogoras. col. 1900-01. Markovo. Siberia
86 cms (h). tanned leather, red yarn, sinew, beads
70-5601e
Fig. 34. Cap. Even
Bogoras, 1900-01. Markovo, Siberia

27 cms (h). reindeer skin, hair embroidery, fur trim
70-5601f

Fig. 270. Apron. Even

Bogoras. col. 1900-01, Markovo. Siberia

81 cms (1). reindeer skin, beads, hair embroidery, fur trim

70-5601g.h

Fig. 300. Gloves. Even

Bogoras. col. 1900-01, Markovo, Siberia

24 cms (1). reindeer skin, beads, red flannel

70-5620a

Fig. 417, Shaman's coat, Yukaghir
Bogoras, col. 1900-01, Markovo, Siberia
96 cms (1). reindeer skin and fur, leather applique, hair
embroidery, sinew, fur trim, red flannel
70-5620b

Fig. 111. Shaman's apron. Yukaghir
Bogoras, col. 1900-01. Markovo, Siberia

94 cms* (1), reindeer skin and fur. hair embroidery, red flannel.

sinew

70-5620c

Fig. 334. Shaman's hat. Yukaghir
Bogoras. col. 1900-01. Markovo. Siberia
91 cms (1). reindeer skin, hair embroidery, dyed seal pup fur
tassels, sinew
70-5623a,b

Fig. 18. Tobacco pipe and pouch, Even
Bogoras. col. 1900-01, Markovo. Siberia

22 cms (1). brass bowl and chain, leather, wood, iron, beads
70-5623c

Fig. 34. Beaded pouch. Even

Bogoras. col. 1900-01. Markovo, Siberia

1 1 cms (1), leather, beads, brass, stone (charm inside)

70-5695

Fig. 236, Flintlock with stand and powder kit. Chukchi
Bogoras, col. 1900-01, Markovo. Siberia
99 cms (1). wood, metal, skin
70-5698

Fig. 236, Gun kit, Chukchi

Bogoras. col. 1900-01. Markovo. Siberia

33 cms (1). leather, metal, bone, ivory, wood

70-5773a.b

Fig. 339. Shaman's boots. Even or Evenk
Bogoras. col. 1900-01. Markovo. Siberia

70 cms (h). reindeer suede, hair emboidery, dog fur. dyed seal
pup fur tassels, beads, leather, sinew, red flannel
70-5796a,b

Fig. 87. Orthodox traveling icon with pouch. Even
Bogoras, col. 1900-01. Markovo. Siberia
13 cms (w; icon), wood, paper, lacquer, leather
70-5873b

Fig. 323, Beaded pouch. Ojibwa
Jesup Exp., col. 1900-01, Siberia

28 cms (h). cloth, beads
70-6303

Fig. 31, Spinning game/sinew twister, Koryak
Bogoras. col. 1900-01. Baron KorfFs Bay. Siberia
17 cms (1), walrus ivory, sinew, iron
70-6453

Fig. 237, Fox trap, Chukchi

Bogoras. col. 1900-01, Marinskii Post, Siberia

74 cms (1). wood, leather, bone, sinew, iron nails

70-6548

Fig. 336, Toy drum with beater. Chukchi
Bogoras. col. 1900-01, Marinskii Post. Siberia

25 cms (1). Wood, walrus stomach, baleen beater
70-6566

Fig. 344. Keretkun ceremonial net. Chukchi
Bogoras. col. 1900-01, Marinskii Post, Siberia
157 cms (1). fiber, baleen, painted wood pendants
70-6620

Fig. 325, Necklace. Chukchi

Bogoras, col. 1900-01, Marinskii Post. Siberia

41 cms (1), beads, fiber

70-6690

Fig. 328, Sacrificial bowl. Chukchi
Bogoras. col. 1900-01. Marinskii Post. Siberia
54 cms (1), wood
70-6691

Fig. 340. Divining pouch, Chukchi
Bogoras. col. 1900-01. Marinskii Post, Siberia
23 cms (h). reindeer skin, graphite pendant
70-6792

Fig. 337, Shaman's knife. Chukchi
Bogoras, 1900-01. Marinskii Post. Siberia

26 cms (1), iron, wood, leather cut-out figures, bead, sinew
70-6793

Fig. 337, Shaman’s knife. Chukchi
Bogoras, col. 1900-01, Marinskii Post, Siberia
17 cms (1). ivory, leather cut-out figures
70-6932

Fig. 344. Keretkun prayer paddle. Chukchi
Bogoras. col. 1900-01. Marinskii Post. Siberia
74 cms (1). painted wood
70-6979A

Fig. 228, Reindeer training club. Chukchi
Bogoras. col. 1900-01. Marinskii Post, Siberia
80 cms (1). wood, leather
70-6980a

Fig. 227, Quiver. Chukchi

Bogoras. col. 1900-01, Marinskii Post. Siberia

85 cms (1). wood, leather, hair emboidery. seal fur trim

70-6980b

Fig. 225, Arrow, Chukchi

Bogoras, col. 1900-01, Marinskii Post, Siberia

83 cms (1). wood, feather, bone tip

70-6980d

Fig. 225. Arrow. Chukchi

Bogoras, col. 1900-01. Marinskii Post. Siberia

wood, iron tip

70-6980e

Fig. 225, Arrow, Chukchi

Bogoras, col. 1900-01, Marinskii Post, Siberia

wood, feathers, iron tip. leather

70-7267a,b

Fig. 36. Earrings. Chukchi

Bogoras. col. 1900-01. Cape Anannon, Siberia

19 cms (1). leather, beads, dyed seal pup fur. dog fur, brass
cartridge ends

70-7435

Fig. 325, Necklace. Chukchi

Bogoras. col. 1900-01. Marinskii Post. Siberia

40 cms (1), glass beads, brass navy buttons

70-7455

Fig. 325, Bracelet, Chukchi

Bogoras. col. 1900-01, Marinskii Post, Siberia

9 cms (w). glass beads, hide, fiber, button

70-7684

Fig. 228. Reindeer whip. Chukchi

Bogoras, col. 1900-01, Middle Anadyr River. Siberia

148 cms (1). wood, ivory or bone

70-7689a,b

Fig. 231, Fur-covered skis. Itelmen
Bogoras. col. 1900-01. Anadyr River. Siberia
150 cms (1), wood, sealskin, leather thongs
70-7781a.b

Fig. 325, Braid ornaments. Chukchi
Bogoras. col. 1900-01. Marinskii Post, Siberia
39 cms (1), glass beads, leather, brass bottons, sinew
70-7810

Fig. 331, Charm string, Chukchi
Bogoras. col. 1900-01. Marinskii Post. Siberia
91 cms (1). wood, sinew, leather, fiber
70-7861a

Fig. 302, Spear. Chukchi

Bogoras, col. 1900-01, Markovo. Siberia

153 cms (1). wood, iron

70-7888

Fig. 230, Dog sled model, Chukchi
Bogoras. col. 1900-01, Marinskii Post, Siberia
39 cms (1), wood, sinew, hide, fur
70-7891

Fig. 444. Pictograph drawing on board. Chukchi

Bogoras, col. 1900-01, Marinskii Post, Siberia

48 cms (1), wood

Uncataloged

Fig. 113. Telegram

20 cms (1). paper
Uncataloged
Fig. 116. Tea pot
25 cms (h). brass

Uncataloged
Fig. 116, Compass

5 cms (dia). brass, glass

CMC: Canadian Museum of Civilization (Ottawa)

GbTo-23: 850

Fig. 169, Comb, prehistoric

MacDonald, col. 1960s, Garden I. site. Prince Rupert Hbr. B.C.

6 cms (1). bone
GbTo-31: 211

Fig. 169, Miniature wai club, prehistoric
MacDonald, col. 1960s, Boardwalk site. Prince Rupert Hbr..
B.C.

18 cms (1), bone

GbTo-31: 522

Fig. 172. Club, prehistoric

MacDonald, col. 1960s, Boardwalk site. Prince Rupert Hbr..

B.C. 43 cms (1), whalebone
GbTo-31 :21 78

Fig. 168, Raven amulet, prehistoric

MacDonald, col. 1960s, Boardwalk site. Prince Rupert Hbr..
B.C.

5 cms (1). schist
GbTo-31 :X717

Fig. 169. Segmented stone, prehistoric
MacDonald, col. 1960s, Boardwalk site, Prince Rupert Hbr..
B.C.

8 cms (1). stone
GbTo-34:1805

Fig. 169, Comb, prehistoric

MacDonald, col. 1960s. Kitandach site. Prince Rupert Hbr..
B.C.

9 cms (1). bone
Uncataloged

Fig. 171, Petroglyph (cast). Tsimshian
Skeena River. B.C.. Canada
VII-A-360

Fig. 289, Tunic, Tlingit

Powell, col. 1879, Lynn Canal. Alaska

80 cms (1), mountain goat wool, red wool cloth, cotton print
cloth

VII-B-1000

Fig. 9. Lime mortar, Haida

Mackenzie, col. 1884. Masset, British Columbia. Canada

9 cms (1). sperm whale tooth

VII-B-1527

Fig. 266. House screen. Haida

Bossom. col. c. 1900. Howkan, Long Island. Alaska

380 cms (w). painted wood (cedar)

VII-B-908

Fig. 170, Maul/ tobacco pestle. Haida
Aaronson. acc. 1899, Queen Charlotte Is.. B.C.

21 cms (h). stone
VII-C-1766a-j

Fig. 383, Crest hat, Tsimshian

Bossom, col. ca. 1900. Port Simpson. B.C.. Canada

59 cms (1), painted wood

VII-C-271

Fig. 167. Eye amulet. Tsimshian

Newcombe. col. 1905. Kitladamiks, British Columbia. Canada

4 cms (h). stone

VII-C-339.340

Fig. 375. Rattles. Tsimshian

Powell, col. ca. 1879, Bella Coola (?). B.C.. Canada
28 cms (h), painted wood (maple?), human hair, pebbles
XII-B-1 798

Fig. 154, Seated figure bowl, prehistoric
Alouette River, B.C., Canada
21 cms (h), steatite
XII-B-31 7

Fig. 170. Tobacco mortar (frog). Haida
Powell, col. 1879. British Columbia Canada
28 cms (1). stone
XII-B-560

Fig. 170. War club (fish), prehistoric

Powell, col. 1879, Metlakatla, British Columbia. Canada

20 cms (1), stone

FM: Field Museum of Natural History (Chicago)

13747

Fig. 285, Bark shredder. Tlingit

Emmons (?), acc. 1921, Upper Nass River, British Columbia
46 cms (w). wood (yew)

14937

Fig. 67. Quiver. Athapaskan
acc. 1894. Yukon River. Alaska
59 cms (1). buckskin, beads, sinew
19022

Fig. 380. Copper. Tlingit

acc. 1913, Queen Charlotte Is.. B.C. (?)

76 cms (h). painted copper
53420

Fig. 211. Container for endblades. North Alaskan Eskimo
Bruce, col. 1897, King Island. Alaska
27 cms (1). ivory, bone, leather, bead
53423

Fig. 209. Whale charm for umiak bow. North Alaskan Eskimo
Bruce, col. 1897. Pt. Hope. Alaska
35 cms (w). wood, quartz crystal, beads

345

53453

Fig. 197. Meat sled. North Alaskan Eskimo
Bruce, col. 1897, Pt Hope. Alaska
28 cms (1). wood, ivory, leather, iron
78703

Fig. 399. Chest. Tlingit

Emmons, acc. 1902. Admiralty Island. Alaska
63 cms (w). Wood (yellow and red cedar)

177368

Fig. 212, Ceremonial baleen bucket. North Alaskan Eskimo
Borden, col. 1927, Cape Prince of Wales. Alaska

12 cms (h), baleen, ivory, iron

Koniag, Inc. (Kodiak, Alaska)

UA84.193. 889

Fig. 161. Labret, Koniag

Jordan, col. 1984, Karluk 1 site. Kodiak Island. Alaska

7 cms (w). wood

UA84.193. 893

Fig. 161. Labret. Koniag

Jordan, col 1984. Karluk 1 site. Kodiak Island. Alaska

7 cms (w). wood

UA84. 193. 1044

Fig. 160. Owl mask, Koniag

Jordan, col. 1984, Karluk 1 site. Kodiak Island, Alaska
23 cms (h), wood ,

UA84. 193.2475

Fig. 161, Labret, Koniag

Jordan, col. 1984. Karluk 1 site. Kodiak Island. Alaska

4 cms (w). bone

UA85. 193.3406

Fig. 161. Labret. Koniag

Jordan, col. 1985. Karluk 1 site. Kodiak Island Alaska

4 cms (1). wood

UA85. 193.3455

Fig. 160. Mask. Koniag

Jordan, col. 1985, Karluk 1 site. Kodiak Island. Alaska

16 cms (h). wood

UA85. 193.3695

Fig. 160, Figurine. Koniag

Jordan, col. 1985, Karluk 1 site. Kodiak Island. Alaska

16 cms (h). wood
UA85. 193.3733

Fig. 160. Figurine with labrets, Koniag

Jordan, col. 1985. Karluk 1 site. Kodiak Island. Alaska

17 cms (h). wood
UA85. 193.4026

Fig. 163. Maskette. Koniag

Jordan, col. 1985. Karluk 1 site. Kodiak Island. Alaska
4 cms (h). wood
UA85. 193.4063

Fig. 160. Figurine with labrets, Koniag

Jordan, col. 1985, Karluk 1 site. Kodiak Island. Alaska

16 cms (h). wood

UA85. 193.4188

Fig. 161, Labret. Koniag

Jordan, col. 1985, Karluk 1 site. Kodiak Island. Alaska

4 cms (1). bone

UA85. 193.4372

Fig. 161. Labret. Koniag

Jordan, col 1985, Karluk 1 site. Kodiak Island. Alaska

2 cms (w), walrus ivory
UA85. 193. 6311

Fig. 163, Maskette. Koniag

Jordan, col. 1985, Karluk 1 site. Kodiak Island. Alaska

4 cms (h). wood

UA85. 193.6459

Fig. 161. Labret. Koniag

Jordan, col 1985, Karluk 1 site. Kodiak Island. Alaska

6 cms (w). wood

Uncataloged

Fig. 161, Labret. Koniag

Jordan, col 1987, Karluk 1 site. Kodiak Island. Alaska

3 cms (1), ground slate
Uncataloged

Fig. 999, Maskette. Koniag

Jordan, col. 1987, Karluk 1 site. Kodiak Island. Alaska

13 cms (h). wood
Uncataloged

Fig. 165. Birthing amulet, Koniag

Jordan, col. 1987, Karluk 1 site. Kodiak Island. Alaska

16 cms high, wood. human(?) hair

Uncataloged

Fig. 161. Labret. Koniag

Jordan, col. 1987, Karluk 1 site. Kodiak Island. Alaska
2 cms (w). limestone

MAE. Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Leningrad)
11-167

Fig. 360. Float board. Eskimo
Alaska

74 cms (1), wood, baleen
36-162a

Fig. 25. Knife. Nivkhi

Schrenk, acc. 1857, Sakhalin Island. Siberia
44 cms (1). iron, lead, copper, brass
36-162b

Fig. 25. Sheath for knife, Nivkhi
Schrenk, acc. 1857. Sakhalin Island. Siberia
33 cms (1). sturgeon skin

138-42

Fig. 273. Needlecase, Oroch
Poliak, acc. 1883, Sakhalin Island
12 cms (1). ivory, wood, leather strip
147-4

Fig. 90, Calendar. Even
Bunge, acc. 1884, Siberia

14 cms (1). incised ivory, pigment
202-102

Fig. 307, Spear point, Nivkhi

Suprunenko, acc. 1890. Sakhalin Island, Siberia

43 cms (1). iron, brass
211-2

Fig. 371, Oyster catcher rattle. Tlingit
Chudnovskii, col. 1891, Admiralty Island. Alaska
31 cms (1). painted wood, sinew, hide
256-17

Fig. 36. Boots. Chukchi

Shklovskii. acc. 1894. Nizhne-Kolymsk, Siberia

44 cms (h). reindeer skin, red yarn
313-18/7

Fig. 414. Fishskin coat. Nanai
acc. 1896, Amur River region. Siberia
109 cms (1). dyed fishskin, brass buttons
337-18

Fig. 245, Beaver bowl. Tlingit
Doroshin. acc. 1897. Alaska

19 cms (1). painted wood (alder7, red cedar), operculum shell.

spruce root
395-8b

Fig 36. Woman's combination suit. Chukchi
Gondatti. acc. 1898. Anadyr district. Siberia
100 cms (1). reindeer fur. dog fur trim, fiber cords
395-11

Fig. 272. Infant's combination suit, Chukchi
Gondatti. acc. 1898, Anadyr district. Siberia
58 cms (1). reindeer fawn fur. dyed leather thong, sinew
408-71

Fig. 227. Chukchi quiver. Chukchi

Gondatti. acc. 1898, Anadyr district. Siberia

58 cms (1). reindeer skin, hair and sinew embroidery, wood

422-59

Fig. 338. Divination charm. Chukchi
Gondatti. acc 1898, Anadyr district, Siberia
9 cms (h; figure), wood. skin, sinew
422-77

Fig. 328. Ancestor guardian amulet, Chukchi
Gondatti. acc. 1898. Anadyr district. Siberia

15 cms (h), wood, skin
434-17/2

Fig. 195. Harpoon head. Chukchi
Gondatti. acc. 1898. Anadyr district. Siberia

37 cms (1). bone, walrus ivory, iron, rawhide
434-21d

Fig. 185. Jig fishing outfit. Chukchi
Gondatti. acc. 1898. Anadyr district. Siberia
49 cms (1). wood, baleen, ivory, leather thong, iron
434-38/1

Fig. 315, Pipe. Chukchi

Gondatti. acc 1898. Anadyr district. Siberia

48 cms (1). wood, lead

434-7

Fig. 269. Snow beater. Chukchi
Gondatti. acc 1898. Anadyr district. Siberia
51 cms (1). antler
434-80d

Fig. 259, Doll. Chukchi

Gondatti. acc. 1898. Anadyr district. Siberia

38 cms (h), reindeer skin, cotton cloth, beads, sinew
434-83

Fig. 259, Leather kick ball. Chukchi
Gondatti. acc. 1898, Anadyr district. Siberia
17 cms (dia), sealskin, seal hair

441- 37/2

Fig. 420. Carving of bears, Koryak

Gondatti. col. 1890s, Anadyr River region. Siberia

6 cms (h). walrus ivory

442- 6-5

Fig. 32, Earrings, Koryak
Gondatti. col. 1890s, Siberia
5 cms (1). brass
442-7-5

Fig. 32. Bracelet. Koryak
Gondatti, col. 1890s. Siberia
9 cms (w), iron, tin
442-7-7

Fig. 32. Bracelet. Koryak

Gondatti, acc 1898, Paren' or Kuel, Anadyr district. Siberia

8 cms (dia). iron, tin

442-25/2

Fig. 19. Ivory pipe. Chukchi

Gondatti. acc. 1898. Anadyr district, Siberia

1 1 cms (1). walrus ivory, lead

445-l-13a.b

Fig. 295, Gloves. Even

Gondatti. acc. 1898. Anadyr district. Siberia
23 cms (1). leather, hair embroidery
445-6/1

Fig. 33. Pendant. Even

Gondatti. acc. 1898, Anadyr district, Siberia

15 cms (w), brass, leather

445-6/3

Fig. 33. Pendant. Even

Gondatti. acc 1898, Anadyr district. Siberia

17 cms (w), brass, leather
454-3

Fig. 35. Woman's apron. Even

Bogdanovich, acc. 1899, Kamchatka. Siberia

90 cms (1), dyed and tanned leather, hair embroidery, beads.

sinew

518-la

Fig. 393. Spoon. Chugach Eskimo
Kashevarov, acc. 1840s. Southeastern Alaska

16 cms (1). mountain goat horn, beads
518-lb

Fig. 393. Spoon, Chugach Eskimo
Kashevarov. acc. 1840s. Alaska

18 cms (1), mountain goat horn, beads

536- 4

Fig. 390. Grease bowl, Chugach Eskimo
Lisianskii. acc. 1807. Alaska

19 cms (1). painted wood (spruce?)

537- 4a

Fig. 46. Three-cylinder box. Bering Sea Eskimo
Zagoskin, col. 1842-44. Lower Yukon River. Alaska

1 1 cms (w). painted wood, ivory, beads

537- 4b

Fig. 94. Carved tobacco box. Bering Sea Eskimo
Zagoskin, col. 1842-44, Lower Yukon River. Alaska

12 cms (1), painted wood, beads, ivory

538- 2

Fig. 440, Death mask. Aleut

Archimandritov, acc. 1857, Atka Island, Aleutians. Alaska
31 cms (h). painted wood

539- 1

Fig. 206, Spruce root hat. Chugach or Koniag Eskimo
Golovnin, col 1818. Kodiak Island (?). Alaska
24 cms (dia). painted twined spruce root
568-1

Fig. 193, Throwing board, Aleut
Romanovskii. Aleutian Islands, Alaska
52 cms (1). painted wood, ivory hook
571-6

Fig. 50. Mask, Koniag

Voznesenskii. col. 1842. Kodiak Island. Alaska

painted wood, feathers

571-12

Fig. 368. Mask. Koniag

Voznesenskii. col. 1840s. Kodiak Island. Alaska
43 cms (h). painted wood, rawhide, sinew
571-17

Fig. 310, Helmet. Tlingit

Voznesenskii. col. 1840s, Southeastern Alaska

22 cms (h). painted wood, human hair, abalone shell, hide ties

571-19

Fig. 382, Headdress. Tlingit
Voznesenskii, col. 1840s, Southeastern Alaska
41 cms (w), painted wood, sea lion whiskers, copper
eyebrows, painted hide, iron nails, baleen
571-52

Fig. 242, Drill bow. North Alaskan Eskimo
Voznesenskii, col. 1840s. Kotzebue Sound. Alaska
43 cms (1). walrus ivory, leather
571-60

Fig. 93. Pouch. Aleut

Voznesenskii. col. 1840s, St. George Island. Pribilof Is.. Alaska

20 cms (w). painted skin, sinew thread, cormorant feathers,
hair

571-63

Fig. 46. Tobacco box (wolf head), Bering Sea Eskimo
Voznesenskii. col. 1840s. Probably lower Yukon River. Alaska
11 cms (w), painted wood, ivory, beads, hair, bone "teeth''
571-79

Fig. 58, Gutskin hat. Aleut

Voznesenskii. col. 1840s. St. George Island, Pribilof Is., Alaska
30 cms (dia). colored esophagus, yarn, hair, hair embroidery
593-16

Fig. 47. Hunting hat. Koniag Eskimo

Voznesenskii. col. 1840s. Katmai. Alaska Peninsula, Alaska

28 cms (h), painted wood, ivory, hair

593-18

Fig. 52, Ceremonial kameleika. Aleut

Voznesenskii. col. 1844. Unalaska Island. Aleutian Is.. Alaska
125 cms (h), gutskin, cormorant feathers, colored skin strips.

sinew thread embroidery, hair, woven grass
593-34

Fig. 405, Spruce root crest hat. Chugach Eskimo
Voznesenskii, col. 1840s, Southeastern Alaska
20 cms (dia), painted spruce root, grass, wool, metal wire
593-45

Fig. 427, Effigy dish, Bering Sea Eskimo
Voznesenskii. col. 1840s, Yukon River, Alaska
22 cms (1). painted wood, beads
593-51

Fig. 201, Hunting hat. Bering Sea Eskimo
Voznesenskii. col. 1840s, Prob Norton Sound. Alaska
50 cms (1). painted wood, walrus ivory, leather, oldsquaw
feathers, grass, bone

346

593-53

Fig. 187, Canoe model, Tlingit
Voznesenskii. col. 1840s, Southeastern Alaska
102 cms (1). painted wood
593-64

Fig. 226, Bow. Koniag Eskimo

Voznesenskii. col. 1840s, Katmai, Alaska Peninsula, Alaska
131 cms (1), painted wood (red and black mineral paint),
sinew, red yarn, ivory
593-67

Fig. 193, Throwing board, Bering Sea Eskimo
Voznesenskii. col. 1840s, Nunivak Island, Alaska

43 cms (1). wood, glass beads, walrus ivory
593-93a

Fig. 51. Kayak paddle. Koniag Eskimo
Voznesenskii. col. 1840s, Probably Kodiak Island. Alaska
147 cms (1). painted wood
61 1-79/la.b

Fig. 40, Summer boots. Chukchi
Miagkov, col. 1900, Provideniia, Siberia

40 cms (h). dehaired sealskin, tanned and dyed leather, sinew,
reindeer hair embroidery
620-40a

Fig. 298, Tunic, Holikachuk

Voznesenskii. col. 1840s, Upper Innoko River. Alaska
140 cms (1), tanned skin, dyed porcupine quills, seeds
633-12

Fig. 252, Pouch. Aleut

Admiralty Dept. acc. 1826, Aleutian Islands, Alaska

19 cms (w). grass, thread

633-14

Fig. 252, Pouch. Aleut

Admiralty Dept, acc. 1826. Aleutian Islands. Alaska
15 cms (w). painted linen, painted leather, gutskin thread,
hair, yarn
633-18

Fig. 408, Spruce root hat. Chugach Eskimo
Admiralty Dept. acc. 1826. Southeastern Alaska
38 cms (dia). painted spruce root
633-8

Fig. 81. War helmet, Tlingit
Lisianskii. col 1802. Southeastern Alaska
23 cms (h). wood (maple?), hide ties, human hair, red turban
snail opercula
656-42

Fig. 195, Harpoon head. Oroch
Sternberg, col. 1902, Sakhalin Island. Siberia
28 cms (1), ivory, iron, rawhide
666-15b

Fig. 273. Needlecase. Chukchi

Litke. col. 1828, Chukchi Peninsula. Siberia

27 cms (1), ivory, leather

668-2

Fig. 197. Ice scratcher for sealing. Chukchi
Litke (?). Chukchi Peninsula, Siberia
32 cms (1). wood, ivory, seal claws, leather, sinew
668-6

Fig. 273. Needlecase. Chukchi
Chukchi Peninsula. Siberia
10 cms (1), ivory, leather
668-17

Fig. 244. Bucket, Asiatic Eskimo
Chukchi Peninsula. Siberia
25 cms (dia), whalebone, wood
699-1

Fig. 92. Figurine, Koniag Eskimo
Lisianskii, col. 1804-05. Kodiak Island. Alaska

10 cms (h). ivory, sinew, beads
864-1

Fig. 230. Dog sled model. Itelmen

acc. 1784, Prob. Kamchatka Peninsula. Siberia

44 cms (1), wood, sealskin, cloth, reindeer skin, antler toggles,
metal chains

956-54

Fig. 421. Belt for funeral costume. Koryak
Jochelson. col. 1900-01. Anadyr district, Okhotsk coast.

Siberia

139 cms (1), sealskin, iron buckle, hair embroidery, yarn
956-65a.b

Fig. 321. Tobacco box with beaded pouch. Koryak
Jochelson. col 1900-01. Anadyr River, Siberia

1 1 cms (w; box), leather, birch bark, wood, metal hinges, skin,
beads

956-82

Fig. 332, Funeral hat. Koryak
Jochelson. col. 1900-01. Kushka. Siberia
27 cms (h). reindeer fawn skin, sealskin, dyed seal pup fur,
hair embroidery, sinew
956-87

Fig. 227, Funeral quiver. Koryak
Jochelson. col. 1900-01. Kushka. Siberia
75 cms (1). reindeer skin, cloth, wood, silk thread, hair and
sinew embroidery, red-dyed fur
956-92

Fig. 307. Spear point. Koryak
Jochelson. col. 1900-01. Kushka, Siberia
46 cms (1). iron, brass
1059-85

Fig. 421, Embroidered hem. Koryak

Jochelson. col. 1900-01. Anadyr district. Siberia
216 cms (1), leather, wool. silk, reindeer hair, sinew
1791-174

Fig. 421. Belt. Chukchi

Tolmachev, col. 1909. Mouth of Kolyma River, Siberia

102 cms (1). Dyed and bleached sealskin, bone buckle, cotton
thread

1791-186

Fig. 38, Pouch. Chukchi

Tolmachev, col. 1909. Mouth of Kolyma River, Siberia

26 cms (w). sealskin, leather appliquaa

1799-1

Fig. 419, Pouch, Even
Tolmachev, col. 1909, Siberia

24 cms (1), fur, appliquaad leather, hair, beads, red wool,
leather thong, bone

2442-3

Fig. 192, Three-hole kayak model. Aleut
acc. 1915, Aleutian Islands, Alaska

62 cms (1). gutskin, wood, sinew, beads, yarn, pigment, ivory,
cord
2448-24

Fig. 65. Raven rattle. Tlingit

Voznesenskii, col. 1840s. Southeastern Alaska

30 cms (1). painted wood (maple?), pebbles, hide thong

2448-26

Fig. 245. Paint brush, Tlingit
Voznesenskii. col. 1840s. Southeast Alaska

30 cms (1), wood (yellow cedar), porcupine guard hair, spruce
root

2448-28

Fig. 245, Paint brush. Tlingit

Voznesenskii. col. 1840's. Southeast Alaska

19 cms (1). wood (yew?), porcupine guard hair, spruce root

2448-30

Fig. 95. Rattle panel. Tlingit
Voznesenskii(?). Southeast Alaska
78 cms (1). painted wood, pebbles
2448-9

Fig. 372, Mask. Tlingit
Voznesenskii(?). Southeast Alaska
22 cms (h). painted wood
2454-10

Fig. 82, Leather armor shirt. Tlingit
Sitka, Alaska

101 cms (1). tanned, painted hide
2454-15

Fig. 410. Helmet. Tlingit
Southeast Alaska

25 cms (h). painted wood, sea lion teeth and whiskers, hide
ties

2454-17

Fig. 310. Helmet. Tlingit
Southeast Alaska

26 cms (h). painted wood, human hair, red turban snail
opercula. heavy hide

2454-8

Fig. 308. Slat armour cuirass. Tlingit
Southeast Alaska

103 cms (1). painted wood (crabapple?). sinew, heavy hide
2520-2

Fig. 189, Canoe model, Tlingit
Southeast Alaska

78 cms (1). painted wood, human hair
2520-14

Fig. 396. Spruce root hat. Tlingit
Voznesenskii(?), Southeast Alaska
42 cms (dia.), painted spruce root, leather straps
2520-16

Fig. 402. Woven spruce root hat, Chugach (?) Eskimo
Voznesenskii(?), Southeast Alaska
45 cms (dia), painted spruce root
2520-21

Fig. 395, Spruce root hat. Tlingit

Voznesenskii(?). Southeast Alaska

34 cms (dia). painted spruce root, glass beads, sinew

2520-6

Fig. 284. Geometric woven blanket. Tlingit

Cook (?). Southeast Alaska

166 cms (w), mountain goat wool, fur trim

2539-3

Fig. 184. Halibut hook, octopus design. Tlingit
Voznesenskii(?), Southeast Alaska

31 cms (1), wood, spruce root, iron
2539-17

Fig. 224. Grease dish. Tlingit
Southeast Alaska

25 cms (1). wood (alder?), red turban snail opercula
2539-30

Fig. 374. Shaman's hair fastener, Tlingit
Voznesenskii. col. 1840s. Southeast Alaska
11 cms (w). wood (yew?)

2667-14

Fig. 304. Club. Ahtna

Voznesenskii. col. 1840s, Copper River, southeast Alaska
56 cms (1; with fringe), antler, leather, beads, hair embroidery.

sinew, ocher
2868-40

Fig. 411. Hunting hat, Aleut or Eskimo

Voznesenskii. col. 1840s. Alaska Peninsula?, Alaska
98 cms (1; incl. whiskers), painted wood, ivory, beads, sea lion
whiskers, sinew, hair, grass
2868-76

Fig. 86. Gutskin cape in Russian style. Aleut (?)

Aleutian Is. or Kodiak I , Alaska

140 cms (1). dyed gutskin. hair embroidery, cormorant
feathers, sinew

2868-82

Fig. 204, Hunting hat. Aleut

Voznesenskii, col. 1840s. Aleutian Islands. Alaska

103 cms (1; incl. whiskers), painted wood, walrus ivory, beads.

sealion whiskers, dyed grass, yarn, sinew, hair, leather
2868-83

Fig. 181. Hunting hat, Aleut
Voznesenskii. col. 1840s, Aleutian Is. (?). Alaska
80 cms (1; incl. whiskers), painted wood, walrus ivory, sea lion
whiskers
2888-30

Fig. 193, Throwing board. Koniag Eskimo
Voznesenskii. col. 1840s. Kodiak Island. Alaska
51 cms (1). wood, ivory, beads
2888-84

Fig. 268. Cormorant coat, Koniag
Voznesenskii. col. 1840s. Kodiak Island. Alaska
121 cms (1), cormorant neck skins, dyed skin and gutskin. hair
embroidery, ermine fur trim, cloth, puffin beaks
2888-89

Fig. 200, Seal hunting helmet. Koniag Eskimo
Voznesenskii, col. 1840s. Kodiak Island. Alaska
29 cms (1). painted wood, leather
2888-93

Fig. 88. Woven pouch, Aleut
Voznesenskii, 1840s. Aleutian Islands (?). Alaska
15 cms (w), grass, silk. wool, cotton thread
2913-20

Fig. 226. Bow. Chugach Eskimo
Southeast Alaska
138 cms (1). painted wood, sinew
2915-la. b

Fig. 391, Chest, Koniag or Chugach
Southeast Alaska

22 cms (1), painted wood, woolen string, glass beads
2938-2

Fig. 92. Doll. Bering Sea Eskimo
Voznesenskii. col. 1840s. Norton Sound. Alaska
19 cms (h). walrus ivory
2938-6

Fig. 73, Sea otter carving, Aleut

Voznesenskii. col. 1840s, Aleutian Islands. Alaska

17 cms (1). ivory
3235-14

Fig. 205, Hunting hat, Bering Sea Eskimo
Nunivak Island (?). Alaska

38 cms (1). painted wood, walrus ivory, leather thong
3896-1

Fig. 97, Dancecoat, Koryak
Stebnitskii, col. 1928. Gizhiga. Siberia

168 cms (w). alder-dyed reindeer skin, fur patchwork, dog fur
trim, leather fringes, beads, sinew
4087-10

Fig. 193, Throwing board. Koniag Eskimo
acc. 1930. Kodiak Island (?), Alaska
49 cms (1). wood, sea otter teeth
4104-26

Fig. 252, Pouch. Aleut
Aleutian Islands. Alaska

18 cms (w), grass
4104-38

Fig. 192. Kayak model. Aleut
acc. 1930. Aleutian Islands. Alaska

55 cms (1). wood, sealskin, gutskin, sinew, ivory, baleen, yarn,
cord, pigment

4104- 5

Fig. 203, Hunting visor. Aleut
acc. 1931. Aleutian Islands. Alaska

31 cms (1, incl. whiskers), painted wood, sea lion whiskers,
glass beads, walrus ivory, sinew

4105- 1

Fig. 372, Mask, Tlingit
acc. 1930. Southeast Alaska
25 cms (h), painted wood (alder?)

4105-2

Fig. 372. Mask, Tlingit
acc. 1930. Southeast Alaska
22 cms (h). painted wood, hide ties
4270-44

Fig. 219. Whale dart. Aleut
acc. 1931. Aleutian Islands. Alaska

141 cms (1), painted wood, ivory, sinew, chert blade
4270-96

Fig. 428. Hunting visor. Aleut
Aleutian Islands. Alaska

80 cms (1), painted wood, sea lion whiskers, yarn
4291-7

Fig. 392. Spruceroot basket. Chugach Eskimo
Southeast Alaska

36 cms (h). spruce root, dyed grass

347

4291-50

Fig. 447, Drill bow. North Alaskan Eskimo
Alaska

28 cms (1). walrus ivory
5031-1

Fig. 195. Harpoon head. Koryak
Bilibin, acc. 1933, Paren'. Siberia
31 cms (1). wood, ivory, chert, rawhide
5536-165

Fig. 26. Bear festival bowl. Nivkhi
Kozin, col. 1934.

100 cms (1). wood
5795-12

Fig. 66, Sea lion headdress, Tlingit
acc. 1938. Southeast Alaska

34 cms (h). painted wood (alder?), hide, teeth
5795-26

Fig. 372. Mask. Tlingit
acc. 1938. Southeast Alaska

23 cms (h). painted wood, iron, human hair, red turban
opercula
5795-31

Fig. 372, Mask, Tlingit
Southeast Alaska

23 cms (h), painted wood (red cedar), hair
5795-9

Fig. 310, Visor, Tlingit
acc. 1938, Southeast Alaska
25 cms (dia), wood, hide
5801-2

Fig. 5. Quiver. Athapaskan

64 cms (1). tanned leather, glass beads, porcupine quill.
6010-38

Fig. 327. Engraved tusk showing kelets. Chukchi
acc. 1951. Uelen. Siberia

65 cms (1), walrus tusk, pigments
6479-17-582

Fig. 139, Harpoon socket piece. Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov. col. 1960s, Ekven site, Chukotka, Siberia
31 cms (1). walrus ivory
6479-269

Fig. 139. Harpoon head. Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov. col. 1960s. Ekven site, Chukotka. Siberia
19 cms (1). walrus ivory
6479-552

Fig. 152. Maskette. Old Bering Sea

Arutiunov, col. 1960s, Ekven site. Chukotka. Siberia

3 cms (h), walrus ivory

6479-612

Fig. 138. Winged object. Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov, col. 1960s. Ekven site. Chukotka. Siberia
18 cms (w). walrus ivory
6479-9-205

Fig. 139, Socket piece. Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov. col. 1960s, Ekven site. Chukotka. Siberia

35 cms (1). walrus ivory
6479-9-208

Fig. 138. Winged object. Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov, col. 1960s, Ekven site, Chukotka. Siberia
23 cms (w). walrus ivory
6479/11-407

Fig. 135. Carving of boat, Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov, col. 1960s, Ekven site, Chukotka, Siberia
14 cms (1). walrus ivory
6508-547

Fig. 144, Pottery paddle. Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov, col. 1960s. Ekven site, Chukotka, Siberia
33 cms (1). walrus ivory
6508-562

Fig. 142. Needle case, Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov. col. 1960s, Ekven site. Chukotka. Siberia
8 cms (1). walrus ivory
6561-1000

Fig. 148. Gorget/maskette. Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov. col. 1960s. Ekven site. Chukotka. Siberia

13 cms (h). walrus ivory
6561-1014a,b

Fig. 143, Pottery fragments. Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov, col. 1960s, Ekven site. Chukotka. Siberia

8 and 1 1 cms (w), clay
6561-126

Fig. 139. Socket piece. Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov, col. 1960s, Ekven site. Chukotka. Siberia
23 cms (1). walrus ivory
6561-256

Fig. 140. Winged object. Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov. col. 1960s. Ekven site, Chukotka, Siberia

14 cms (w). walrus ivory
6561-329

Fig. 140. Winged object, Okvik

Arutiunov. col. 1960s. Ekven site. Chukotka, Siberia

13 cms (w), walrus ivory

6561-419

Fig. 142, Boot creaser. Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov. col. 1960s. Ekven site. Chukotka, Siberia

9 cms (1). walrus ivory

6561-516

Fig. 142, Ulu. Old Bering Sea

Arutiunov. col. 1960s. Ekven site, Chukotka. Siberia

1 1 cms (w). walrus ivory, ground slate
6561-722

Fig. 148, Plaque. Old Bering Sea

Arutiunov. col. 1960s. Ekven site, Chukotka. Siberia

9 cms (w). walrus ivory
6587-298

Fig. 136, Hunting hat ornament. Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov. col. 1960s, Ekven site. Chukotka. Siberia

12 cms (1). walrus ivory
6587-300

Fig. 136. Hunting hat ornament. Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov, col. 1960s. Ekven site. Chukotka. Siberia

10 cms (1). walrus ivory, jet

6587- 564

Fig. 144, Pottery paddle. Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov. col. 1960s. Ekven site. Chukotka. Siberia
snail 28 cms (1), walrus ivory

6588- 118

Fig. 148, Dance goggles. Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov, col. 1960s. Ekven site. Chukotka. Siberia

1 1 cms (w). wood
6588-119

Fig. 146, Burial mask. Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov. col. 1960s, Ekven site. Chukotka. Siberia
23 cms (h). wood, bone
6588-12

Fig 141. Vessel. Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov, col. 1960s, Ekven site. Chukotka. Siberia
seeds 54 cms (1), wood

6588-139

Fig. 139. Harpoon head. Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov. col. 1960s, Ekven site. Chukotka. Siberia
1 1 cms (1), walrus ivory
6588-233

Fig. 141. Float nozzle. Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov. col. 1960s, Ekven site. Chukotka, Siberia

4 cms (1), walrus ivory
6588-241

Fig. 142, Sinew twister weight. Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov, col. 1960s. Ekven site. Chukotka. Siberia
9 cms (1). walrus ivory
6588-33

Fig. 142, Ulu handle. Old Bering Sea

Arutiunov. col. 1960s. Ekven site, Chukotka. Siberia

5 cms (w). walrus ivory
6588-36

Fig. 142, Knife handle. Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov, col. 1960s, Ekven site. Chukotka. Siberia

7 cms (w). walrus ivory
6588-38

Fig 1 50, Openwork carving, Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov. col. 1960s, Ekven site, Chukotka, Siberia
1 1 cms (w). walrus ivory
6588-39

Fig. 142. Carving of foot. Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov. col. 1960s. Ekven site. Chukotka. Siberia

8 cms (h). walrus ivory
6588-40

Fig. 150. Ivory chain. Old Bering Sea

Arutiunov. col. 1960s. Ekven site. Chukotka. Siberia

41 cms (1), walrus ivory

6588-41

Fig 142, Ulu handle. Old Bering Sea

Arutiunov, col. 1960s. Ekven site, Chukotka, Siberia

1 1 cms (w). walrus ivory

6588-61

Fig. 141. Float plug. Old Bering Sea

Arutiunov. col. 1960s, Ekven site, Chukotka, Siberia

4 cms (dia.). wood

6588-63

Fig. 141. Wound plug. Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov. col. 1960s. Ekven site. Chukotka. Siberia

13 cms (1). wood
6588-69

Fig. 141. Baleen pail. Old Bering Sea

Arutiunov. col. 1960s, Ekven site. Chukotka. Siberia

13 cms (1). baleen, wood bottom

6588-72

Fig 139. Harpoon head, Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov, col. 1960s, Ekven site, Chukotka, Siberia
13 cms (1). walrus ivory
6588-74

Fig. 143, Pottery paddle. Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov. col. 1960s, Ekven site. Chukotka, Siberia
25 cms (1). walrus ivory
6588-80

Fig. 141. Float plug stopper. Old Bering Sea
Arutiunov. col. 1960s. Ekven site. Chukotka. Siberia
13 cms (1). wood
6750-16

Fig. 260. Sacred fireboard. Koryak

Antropova and Taksami, col. 1960s. Penzhina River area.
Siberia

58 cms (1). wood, fiber, leather, beads, fur

MIHPP: Museum of History and Culture of the Peoples of
Siberia and the Far East (Novosibirsk)

Kn-53-48090

Fig. 133, Statuette (reproduction). Neolithic
Okladnikov, col. 1965. Kondon site. Khabarovsk. Siberia
1 1 cms (h). fired clay

NMAH: National Museum of American History (Washington,
D.C.)

25819.130

Fig. 89. Icon (triptych). Russian

Swan, acc. 1876, Aleutian Islands. Alaska

10 cms (1), brass

56334a

Fig. 322. Whale gun. American

Lewis, acc. 1882. New Bedford. Massachusetts

84 cms (1), iron stock, steel barrel

237848

Fig. 83. Chain mail cuirass. Russian
Kostrometinoff. acc. 1906. Sitka. Alaska
iron rings
420307

Fig. 70. Double eagle plaque, Russian

Krieger. col. 1934, Lower Mamaloose Island. Oregon

23 cms (h), brass

NMNH: National Museum of Natural History (Washington,
D.C.)

1076

Fig. 426. Bentwood bowl. Bering Sea Eskimo
Alaska

29 cms (1), painted wood
1857

Fig. 67. Tunic, Kutchin

Ross. col. 1860. Yukon River. Alaska

114 cms (1). caribou skin, beads, dentalium shells, ocher.

sinew

1857

Fig. 67, Leggings, Kutchin

Ross. col. 1860. Yukon River. Alaska

100 cms (1). caribou skin, beads, ocher, sinew

2024

Fig. 304. Knife. Athapaskan

Ross. acc. 1866, Arctic coast, Alaska or Canada

67 cms (1). iron, split bark wrapping on handle

2128

Fig. 56. Gutskin cape. Aleut
Wilkes, acc. 1866. Aleutian Islands. Alaska
153 cms (1). gutskin. painted skin, hair, and sinew thread
embroidery, cormorant feathers, yarn, hair
3978

Fig. 100, Sealing stool, Canadian Eskimo
McFarlane. acc. 1867. Anderson River, Canada
14 cms (h). wood
6014

Fig. 317. Pipe, Haida

Bulkley. acc. 1868. British Columbia, Canada
21 cms (1), wood, abalone shell, sheet copper
9257

Fig. 370. Shaman's rattle, Tlingit
Hoff. acc. 1870, Sitka. Alaska

25 cms (h). painted wood, human hair, sinew, leather, pebbles
9273

Fig. 61. Spoon, Tlingit
Hoff. acc. 1870, Sitka. Alaska
27 cms (1). mountain goat horn
9288

Fig. 311, Dagger, Tlingit
acc. 1870, Southeast Alaska
72 cms (1). iron, copper, tanned hide
9813

Fig. 374. Amulet. Nishga

Ring. acc. 1870, Ft. Simpson. British Columbia. Canada

19 cms (1). bone, abalone shell
10313

Fig. 62, Hair ornament. Tsimshian
Ring. acc. 1871, British Columbia, Canada
17 cms (1), iron, abalone shell
10983

Fig. 451. Soul catcher, Tsimshian

Ring, acc. 1872, Ft. Simpson, British Columbia. Canada

23 cms (1). bone, braided wool cord

13002

Fig. 164. Mask. Aleut

Dali, acc. 1873. Unga Island. Aleutian Is.. Alaska

23 cms (h), painted wood
13002n

Fig. 164, Mask fragment, Aleut

Dali. acc. 1873. Unga Island. Aleutian Is.. Alaska

24 cms (1). painted wood
13082r

Fig. 164. Model of harpoon head. Aleut

Dali. acc. 1873. Unga Island. Aleutian Is., Alaska

20 cms (1). painted wood
13082r

Fig. 164. Mask fragment, Aleut

Dali. acc. 1873. Unga Island. Aleutian Is.. Alaska

23 cms (1). painted wood

16089

Fig. 155. Whale-man ornament

348

Dali, col. 1870s. Hot Springs site. Port Moller. Alaska

4 cms (1). bone

16140

Fig. 355, Bag fastener. Bering Sea Eskimo
Dali, acc. 1874. Nunivak Island, Alaska
18 cms (1). walrus ivory
16204

Fig. 283, Labret, Bering Sea Eskimo
Dali, acc. 1874, North Alaska

3 cms (w), ivory, bead, wood
16407

Fig. 76. Harpoon arrow, Koniag Eskimo

Dali, acc. 1874, Kodiak Island. Alaska

90 cms (1). painted wood, bone, sinew cord, feathers

17249

Fig. 306, Rod armour, Aleut

Dali. acc. 1875, Kagamil Island. Aleutian Is.. Alaska
60 cms (h). painted wood, leather, sinew cord
18912

Fig. 64. Pipe. Tlingit

Swan. acc. 1875. Sitka. Alaska

1 1 cms (1). wood (walnut), copper bowl

20251b

Fig. 432, Silver bracelet. Haida

Swan, acc. 1876. Queen Charlotte Is.. British Columbia

7 cms (dia). silver

20573

Fig. 183. Sculpin back mask. Tlingit
Swan. acc. 1876, Southeastern Alaska

114 cms (1). painted wood, copper, iron, muslin, grass, leather.

sinew

20610

Fig. 313. War club. Tsimshian

Swan. acc. 1876, Fort Simpson. British Columbia

64 cms (1), wood (yew?)

20633

Fig. 59. Nose ring. Tsimshian

Swan. acc. 1876. Fort Simpson. British Columbia

4 cms (w). abalone shell
20771

Fig. 388, Throwing stick, Tlingit
Swan. acc. 1876. Sitka, Alaska

39 cms (1). wood (yew?), iron lug
20807

Fig. 430. Painted robe, Haida

Swan, acc. 1876. Prince of Wales Island. Alaska

painted skin, fur

20828

Fig. 375, Rattle. Tlingit

Swan, acc. 1876. Klawock, Prince of Wales I . Alaska
54 cms (1), painted wood (red cedar?), tufted puffin beaks.

buckskin, sinew
20844

Fig. 64. Pipe. Tlingit

Swan, acc. 1876, Hootsnuwoo. Alaska

9 cms (1). wood (walnut), copper pipe bowl and tail
23387

Fig. 216. Painted whaling float. Makah
Swan. acc. 1876. Neah Bay. Washington
122 cms (1), painted seal skin, whale sinew, wood, and cedar
bark rope
23409

Fig. 265. Grease bowl, Haida

Swan. acc. 1876. Massett, Queen Charlotte Is.. Alaska
27 cms (1). wood (alder?)

24350

Fig. 445, Box. Bering Sea Eskimo
Turner, acc. 1876. Norton Sound. Alaska
21 cms (1). wood
24436

Fig. 274, Copper needlecase, Bering Sea Eskimo
Turner(?), acc. 1876(?). St. Michael(?), Alaska

40 cms (1), leather, copper, ivory
30764

Fig. 274. Woman's tool box, Bering Sea Eskimo
Turner, acc. 1877. Norton Sound. Alaska
23 cms (1), wood, ivory, leather
33013

Fig. 320. Snuff box and tube. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878. St. Michael. Norton Sound. Alaska

10 cms (1; box), leather, baleen, bird bone, leather thong
33060

Fig. 354, Bentwood bowl, Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878. St. Michael. Norton Sound. Alaska
49 cms (1). painted wood
33106

Fig. 367. Mask, Bering Sea Eskimo

Nelson, col. 1878, Kigiktauik, Norton Sound, Alaska

52 cms (h), painted wood, sinew, feathers, leather strap

33114

Fig. 436, Mask. Bering Sea Eskimo

Nelson, col. 1878, Yukon River near Magemut. Alaska

66 cms (h). painted wood, caribou fur. split root binding

33136

Fig. 200. Hunting visor. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878. St. Michael. Norton Sound. Alaska
36 cms (1). wood, beads, teeth
33700

Fig. 273, Needlecase. North Alaskan Eskimo

Nelson, col. 1878. Norton Sound. Alaska

1 1 cms (1), walrus ivory

33956

Fig. 194. Seal dart. Bering Sea Eskimo

Nelson, col. 1878. Yukon River mouth, south of Magemut

131 cms (1), wood, bone, feathers, rawhide

36057

Fig. 360, Kayak paddles (pair), Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-79. Kushunuk, Alaska
150 cms (1). painted wood

36058

Fig. 196, Repeating lance. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-79, Anogogmut, Alaska
175 cms (1). wood, walrus ivory, fiber cordage
36242

Fig. 446. Box with illustrated lid. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-79. Sfugunugumut. Alaska
34 cms (1), wood, ivory, rawhide
36246

Fig. 445, Box with illustrated lid. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-79. Pastolik, Yukon River mouth. Alaska
40 cms (1), painted wood, ivory
36316

Fig. 248. Ulu. Bering Sea Eskimo

Nelson, col. 1878-79. Kongigunogumut. Alaska

8 cms (1), ivory, iron blade

36859

Fig. 45, Earrings. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-79. Kushunuk. Alaska
2 cms (1). walrus ivory
37063

Fig. 359. Line fastener, Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-79. Askinuk. Alaska
2 cms (w). walrus ivory
37120

Fig. 46. Painted spoon. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-79. Chalitmut, Alaska
25 cms (1). painted wood
37127

Fig. 364. Dance fan, Bering Sea Eskimo

Nelson, col. 1878-79. Lower Kuskokwim River. Alaska

14 cms (1). painted wood
37413

Fig. 186, Tom cod hook, Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-79, Askinuk, Alaska

15 cms (1), bone
37571

Fig. 195. Harpoon head. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col 1878-79. Anogogmut, Alaska
27 cms (1). leather, sinew, bone, ivory, copper blade
37648

Fig. 186. Fish hook. North Alaskan Eskimo
Nelson, col 1878-79. Port Clarence. Alaska

6 cms (1; hook), stone, sinew, auklet beaks, bone, iron
37663

Fig. 283. Labret. North Alaskan Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-79. Norton Sound. Alaska
2 cms (h), limestone, split glass bead
37745

Fig. 358. Hair ornament, Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-79, Kongigunogumut. Alaska

7 cms (w). walrus ivory
37763

Fig. 352, Belt buckle. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-79. Kuskokwim Bay. Alaska
5 cms (w), ivory
38444

Fig. 13. Bolas. Bering Sea Eskimo

Nelson, col 1878-79. Shaktolik, Norton Sound. Alaska

89 cms (1), walrus ivory, rawhide, feather

38451

Fig. 364. Dance fans (pair), Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col 1878-79, Big Lake. Alaska
14 cms (1; without feathers), painted wood, feathers
38635

Fig. 46. Wooden spoon. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-79, Sfugunugumut. Alaska
29 cms (1). painted wood
38637

Fig. 426, Painted spoon. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col 1878-79. Sfugunugumut. Alaska

22 cms (1). painted wood
38645

Fig. 353. Tunghak mask, Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-79. Pinuit, Alaska

23 cms (h). painted wood, leather thong
38649

Fig. 364. Dance fan, Bering Sea Eskimo

Nelson, col 1878-79. Lower Koskokwim River, Alaska

14 cms (1). painted wood

38717

Fig. 4. Hunting hat. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878)79. Kaiuhgumut, Alaska
31 cms (1). painted wood, root lashing, cotton cloth, bone or
ivory
38734

Fig. 348. Bear mask, Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-79. Rasboinsky. Yukon River, Alaska
57 cms (h), oldsquaw and swan feathers, quill, painted wood,
leather thong, sinew, split root binding

38754

Fig. 197, Drag handle. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-79. Shaktolik, Alaska
21 cms (1), walrus ivory, leather, sinew, beads
38800

Fig. 283, Labret, Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col 1878-79, Pinuit, Alaska
2 cms (1), ivory, bead
38855a, b

Fig. 362. Dance fans. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-79, Rasboinsky. Alaska

15 cms (1), painted wood, feathers
38871

Fig. 41, Woman's boots, Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-79, Nushugak. Alaska
45 cms (h), caribou skin, sealskin, red yarn, sinew
43352

Fig. 5, Arrows, Athapaskan

Nelson, col. 1878-80, Fort Reliance. Upper Yukon River.
Alaska

69 - 80 cms (1). wood, feathers, iron points, cordage
43509

Fig. 359. Float plug. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-80. Cape Vancouver, Alaska
5 cms (h). walrus ivory, wood
43535

Fig. 355. Awl, Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-80, Cape Vancouver. Alaska
14 cms (1), walrus ivory, wood and hair plugs
43538

Fig. 359. Spearguards (pair). Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col 1878-80. Cape Vancouver. Alaska

4 cms (w). walrus ivory, hair
43661

Fig. 355, Boot creaser, Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-80. Cape Vancouver. Alaska
7 cms (1). walrus ivory
43670

Fig. 358. Earring. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-80, Cape Vancouver. Alaska
2 cms (1). walrus ivory
43720

Fig. 45, Pendant. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-80. Nunivak Island. Alaska

5 cms (1). walrus ivory
43727

Fig. 352, Earrings. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-80. Nunivak Island. Alaska
2 cms (1). ivory
43746

Fig. 194, Bird dart, Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-80. Nunivak Island, Alaska
147 cms (1). wood, walrus ivory, sinew
44399

Fig. 17. Drill bow. North Alaskan Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-80, Cape Nome. Alaska
44 cms (1), walrus ivory, leather thong
44457

Fig. 20. Cap box. Siberian

Nelson, col. 1878-80. Cape Nome, Alaska

13 cms (1). wood, leather thong

44709

Fig. 359, Line fastener, Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-80. Sledge Island. Alaska

2 cms (h). walrus ivory
44906

Fig. 283. Labret, North Alaskan Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-80, Sledge Island. Alaska

3 cms (1). glass
45475

Fig. 199, Walrus harpoon. North Alaskan Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-80. Cape Nome, Alaska
174 cms (1). wood, ivory, bone, antler, iron, rawhide, beads,
baleen
45502

Fig. 439. Mask. Athapaskan
Nelson, col. 1878-80, Anvik, Alaska
54 cms (h), painted wood, leather, feathers
45524

Fig. 250. Toy bird arrow. North Alaskan Eskimo
Nelson, col 1878-80. Cape Nome. Alaska

29 cms (1). wood, feather, thread, bone
46349

Fig. 184. Halibut hook (salmon design). Tlingit
Bean, acc. 1880, Sitka. Alaska

26 cms (1). wood, split root binding, cedar bark line
48384

Fig. 211. Whale-shaped line sinker, North Alaskan Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-80, Sledge Island, Alaska

30 cms (1). graphite
48986

Fig. 347. Inua mask, Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-81. Sabonitsky. Alaska
24 cms (h), painted wood, hair
48996

Fig. 15, Snow goggles. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-81, Sabotnisky, Alaska

16 cms (w). painted wood, leather strap

349

49060

Fig. 365, Feather dance wand. Bering Sea Eskimo

Nelson, col. 1878-81. Rasboinsky. Alaska

67 cms (1). golden eagle feather, wood stick, leather

49061

Fig. 365, Feather dance wand, Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-81, Rasboinsky. Alaska

63 cms (1), golden eagle feather, wood stick, leather
56026

Fig. 220, Caribou spirit carving, Bering Sea Eskimo
McKay, acc. 1882, Bristol Bay, Alaska
26 cms (1). painted wood, sinew cord, (human?) hair
56045

Fig. 250. Top and launcher. Bering Sea Eskimo
McKay, acc. 1882, Bristol Bay. Alaska
Top, 12 cms (h). painted wood, leather thong
56070

Fig. 324. Earrings, Bering Sea Eskimo
McKay, acc. 1882, Bristol Bay. Alaska

10 cms (1). glass beads, dentalium shells, brass wire, sinew.

leather

56512

Fig. 320, Tobacco box (caribou). North Alaskan Eskimo
Ray, col. 1881-82, Point Barrow. Alaska
15 cms (1). caribou antler, wood, beads
56703

Fig. 214. Whale amulet, North Alaskan Eskimo
Ray. col. 1881-82. Pt. Barrow. Alaska

9 cms (1). glass
60144

Fig. 267, Painted spoon. Tlingit
McLean, acc. 1882, Hoonah. Alaska
34 cms (1). painted wood (alder?)

60147

Fig. 267. Soapberry spoon, Tlingit
McLean, acc. 1882, Hootznahoo, Alaska
37 cms (1), wood (yew?)

60176

Fig. 387. Chest, Tlingit

McLean, acc. 1882, Hoonah, Baranoff Island. Alaska

64 cms (w). painted wood (yellow and red cedar), red turban
snail opercula

60241

Fig. 308. Leather tunic. Tlingit
Mclean. acc. 1882. Hoonah. Baranoff Island. Alaska
76 cms (1). painted heavy hide. Chinese coins, carved bone
"shark teeth"

63514

Fig. 197. Ice creepers. Asiatic Eskimo

Nelson, col. 1878-81, St. Lawrence Island, Alaska

10 cms (1), walrus ivory, iron nails, leather straps
63876

Fig. 197, Net weight. North Alaskan Eskimo
Nelson, col 1878-81. Diomede Islands. Alaska
23 cms (1). walrus ivory
64218

Fig. 349. Fish club. North Alaskan Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-81, Diomede Islands. Alaska

21 cms (1). wood, walrus ivory
64230

Fig. 444. Gorget, North Alaskan Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-81, Point Barrow. Alaska
48 cms (w). painted wood
64230

Fig. 425, Mask. North Alaskan Eskimo
Nelson, col 1878-81, Point Barrow. Alaska

22 cms (h), painted wood, teeth, sinew
64241

Fig. 180. Tunghak mask. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-81. Kuskokwim River, Alaska
72 cms (w). painted wood, teeth, feathers
64260

Fig. 435. Transformation mask. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-81. Kuskokwim River, Alaska
44 cms (h). painted wood, sinew, feathers
72842

Fig. 295, Gloves. Athapaskan
Petroff. acc. 1883, Copper River. Alaska

33 cms (1). tanned leather, dyed porcupine quills, yarn, ocher.

sinew

72936

Fig. 215, Whaling canoe model. Makah

Swan. acc. 1883. Neah Bay. Washington

97 cms (1). painted wood (alder), spruce root, cedar bark.

mussel shell, sinew
72993

Fig. 62. Ear ornaments. Tlingit

Swan. col. 1876. Admirality Island, Alaska

6 cms (1), shark teeth, red yarn

73544

Fig. 190, Paddle, Haida

Gould, acc. 1884. Haida Mission, Jackson, Alaska
173 cms (1). painted wood (yellow cedar)

73831

Fig. 373, Shaman's club. Tlingit

Bolles. acc. 1884. Hoonah. Alaska

67 cms (1). painted wood (alder?), human hair

74041

Fig. 276, Parka. North Alaskan Eskimo

Ray. col. 1881-83, Point Barrow. Alaska

110 cms (1), caribou, reindeer, and mountain sheep skin, wolf
and marten fur trim, dyed leather, red yarn, sinew
74690

Fig. 441. Mask. Koniag
Fisher, col. 1884. Douglas, Alaska
61 cms (h). painted wood
74720

Fig. 406, Spruce root hat. Koniag Eskimo
Fisher, col. 1884. Karluk. Kodiak Island. Alaska
38 cms (dia), painted spruce root, beads, dentalium shells, sea
lion whiskers, sinew, woolen cloth
74926

Fig. 64. Pipe. Tlingit

McLean, acc. 1884. Sitka. Alaska

12 cms (1). wood, iron musket barrel section
74990

Fig. 105. Amulet. Tlingit
McLean, acc. 1884. Sitka, Alaska

13 cms (1), sperm whale tooth
75419

Fig. 312, Spear, Tlingit
McLean, acc. 1884, Sitka. Alaska

155 cms (1). wood (yellow cedar), steel bayonet blade, brass
ferrule
75423

Fig. 263, Gambling sticks in leather pouch. Tlingit
Mclean. acc. 1885. Sitka. Alaska

21 cms (w; pouch), hardwood, abalone shell, hide
76855

Fig. 442, Shaman's mask. Tlingit
Bolles. col. 1883. Chilkat River, Alaska
24 cms (h). painted wood, human hair, opercula. bronze
Chinese coins
88900

Fig. 62. Ear pendants. Haida

Swan. col. 1884. Massett. Queen Charlotte Is.. B.C.

15 cms (w). abalone shell
88924

Fig. 61, Spoon. Haida

Swan. acc. 1884, Massett. Queen Charlotte Is.. B.C.

22 cms (1). mountain goat horn, mountain sheep horn
88961b

Fig. 103. Spruce root hat, Haida

Swan. col. 1884. Massett. Queen Charlotte Is.. B.C.

61 cms (dia). painted spruce root. wood, buckskin ties, metal
buttons
89022

Fig. 245. Paint dish, Haida

Swan. col. 1884. Fort Simpson. British Columbia

24 cms (1). stone

89036

Fig. 385. Crest hat. Haida

Swan, col. 1884. Skedans. British Columbia

50 cms (h). painted wood (red cedar, alder)

89052

Fig. 378, Shaman's rattle. Haida

Swan. col. 1884. Queen Charlotte Is.. British Columbia

30 cms (h). painted wood

89079

Fig. 102, Raven rattle. Haida

Swan, col. 1884. Skidegate, Queen Charlottes Is., B.C.

33 cms (1). painted wood (maple?), leather cord
89167

Fig. 61. Spoon, Haida

Swan. col. 1884. Skidegate. Queen Charlotte Island. B.C.

43 cms (1). mountain goat horn, cow horn
89194

Fig. 381, Appliquaa tunic. Haida

Swan. col. 1884. Skidegate, Queen Charlotte Is.. B.C.

96 cms (1). blue wool blanket, red wool flannel, glass beads
89198b

Fig. 431. Button blanket. Haida

Swan. col. 1884, Skidegate. Queen Charlotte Is.. B.C.

173 cms (w). blue woolen blanket, red flannel, pearl buttons,
painted wood
89418

Fig. 210. Harpoon rest. North Alaskan Eskimo
Ray. col. 1881-83. Point Barrow. Alaska
21 cms (h). ivory, leather
89552

Fig. 186, Fish hook. North Alaskan Eskimo
Ray. col. 1881-83, Point Barrow, Alaska

14 cms (1). bone. iron, sinew
89577

Fig. 214, Whale amulet. North Alaskan Eskimo
Ray. col. 1881-83. Point Barrow. Alaska
5 cms (1). red chert
89761

Fig. 195, Harpoon head. North Alaskan Eskimo
Ray. col. 1881-83, Point Barrow, Alaska
33 cms (1; with thong), walrus ivory, wood, skin cord, brass
blade
89800

Fig. 250. Bullroarer. North Alaskan Eskimo
Ray. col. 1881-83. Point Barrow. Alaska
35 cms (1; handle), painted wood, sinew
89817

Fig. 209. Mask and gorget. North Alaskan Eskimo

Ray, col. 1881-83. Point Barrow, Alaska

47 cms (w; gorget), painted wood, sinew, baleen

89827

Fig. 350. Walrus man doll. North Alaskan Eskimo

Ray, col. 1881-83. Point Barrow, Alaska

45 cms (h), wood, gutskin. fur, sinew cord, ivory, bone, hair

90420

Fig. 51. Kayak gunnelboard. Koniag Eskimo
Fisher, col. 1884. Orlova, Kodiak Island, Alaska
101 cms (1), painted wood
90438

Fig. 369, Puffin beak rattle, Koniag

Fisher, col. 1884. Uganik Island (Kodiak). Alaska

25 cms (dia). wood, sinew, tufted puffin beaks

90444

Fig. 202. Hunting hat. Koniag (?) Eskimo
Fisher, col. 1884. Katmai. Alaska

20 cms (h). painted wood, woven grass and yarn tassels.

beads, ivory, sea lion whiskers
90451

Fig. 361. Dance hat. Koniag
Fisher, col. 1884, Ugashik. Alaska

38 cms (h). pelagic cormorant skins, ermine skins, beads.

wool, hair, leather
90453

Fig. 48. Beaded headdress. Koniag
Fisher, col. 1884. Ugashik. Bristol Bay. Alaska
51 cms (h). beads, leather strips, sinew
127353

Fig. 280, Sewing bag ("housewife"). Bering Sea Eskimo
Applegate, acc. 1886. Nassianmute. Alaska
28 cms (1). caribou or reindeer skin. fur. leather strap, cotton
cloth, bone handle, red yarn, sinew embroidery
127403

Fig. 357, Storyknife. Bering Sea Eskimo
Applegate, acc. 1886. Togiak River, Alaska

18 cms (1). walrus ivory
127473

Fig. 299, Earrings. Bering Sea Eskimo

Applegate, acc. 1886, Tuniakput. Togiak River, Alaska

6 cms (1). ivory, beads, sinew

127766

Fig. 181. Harpoon socket piece. Aglegmiute Eskimo
Fisher, col. 1885-86, Koggiung. Alaska

19 cms (1). walrus jaw bone, wood, leather
127777

Fig. 181, Barbed point. Aglegmiute Eskimo
Fisher, col 1885-86. Koggiung, Alaska
12 cms (1), bone
129219

Fig. 20. Needle case, Bering Sea Eskimo

Turner, acc. 1887. St. Michael, Norton Sound. Alaska

34 cms (1). ivory, leather, beads, sinew

129236

Fig. 356, Doll. Bering Sea Eskimo
Turner, acc. 1887. St. Michael. Alaska
15 cms (h). walrus ivory, reindeer skin, fur
129824

Fig. 433. Beaded shirt. Ingalik

Hazen. acc 1888. Yukon River. Alaska

81 cms (1), tanned (moose?) skin, trade cloth, beads

153428

Fig. 67. Knife. Athapaskan

Russell, acc. 1892. Upper Yukon River. Alaska

28 cms (1). iron, leather

153623

Fig. 367. Mask, Bering Sea Eskimo
Turner, acc. 1892. Norton Sound (?), Alaska
42 cms (h). painted wood, feathers, leather thong
153627

Fig. 363, Mask. Bering Sea Eskimo

Turner, acc. 1892. Norton Sound (?), Alaska

49 cms (h). painted wood, feathers, quills, teeth, baleen

153659

Fig. 250. Toy bow. Bering Sea Eskimo
Turner, acc. 1892, Norton Sound (?), Alaska
32 cms (1). painted wood, sinew, leather
153727

Fig. 199, Sealing harpoon. Bering Sea Eskimo
Turner, acc. 1892. Norton Sound (?), Alaska
170 cms (1), wood, bone, iron, sinew, rawhide
153731

Fig. 196. Lance. North Alaskan Eskimo
Turner, acc. 1892, Norton Sound (?), Alaska
182 cms (1). wood, chert, sinew
153734

Fig. 208. Fur parka. North Alaskan Eskimo

Turner, acc. 1892. Norton Sound (?), Alaska

123 cms (1). reindeer and caribou skin, wolf and wolverine fur.

fox trim, dyed leather, sinew
153892

Fig. 277. Boots, North Alaskan Eskimo
Ray, col. 1881-83, Point Barrow, Alaska
53 cms (h). reindeer skin, sealskin, fur trim. yarn, leather
strings
160564

Fig. 302, Leather armor shield. North Alaskan Eskimo
acc. 1910, Alaska

78 cms (1). sealskin, wood, bone toggles, dyed seal pup fur
tassel, hair embroidery

350

168157

Fig. 310. Helmet. Tlingit
Ogden, acc. 1893. Taku, Alaska
25 cms (h). painted wood
168372

Fig. 373. Shaman's necklace, Tlingit
Emmons, acc. 1894. Gonaho. Alaska

43 cms (1), bone, ivory, leather, pigment
168569

Fig. 54. Kayak bailer, Aleut

acc. 1894. Unalaska Island. Aleutian Is.. Alaska

58 cms (1). painted wood, fiber

168623

Fig. 389, Grease bowl. Chugach Eskimo
Fisher, acc, 1894. Prince William Sound. Alaska
38 cms (1). wood, glass beads
168625

Fig. 195. Harpoon head. Bering Sea Eskimo
Fisher, acc. 1894. Bristol Bay. Alaska

42 cms (1), ground slate, antler, wood, leather, bark, sinew
168626

Fig. 426. Sea otter charm, Bering Sea Eskimo
Fisher, acc. 1894. Bristol Bay. Alaska
10 cms (1). walrus ivory
175668

Fig. 44. Boat hook. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-81. Nunivak Island. Alaska
185 cms (1). wood, ivory, rawhide
175825

Fig. 194. Sea otter dart. Aleut

acc. 1896, Unalaska Island. Aleutian Is., Alaska

129 cms (1). painted wood, sea mammal bone, ivory head.

sinew cord, seal throat skin, red yarn
176104

Fig. 107, Fur parka. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-81, Alaska

118 cms (h). ground squirrel skins, caribou skin, dyed leather.

wolf and wolverine fur
176105

Fig. 41, Fur parka. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-81. Alaska

131 cms (h). arctic ground squirrel skins, reindeer and
marmotskin, red-dyed leather, wolf and wolverine fur trim
176142

Fig. 355, Thread reel. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col 1878-81. Cape Vancouver. Alaska
10 cms (1), walrus ivory, wood plugs
176145

Fig. 359. Float plug. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-81, Cape Vancouver. Alaska
5 cms (h). walrus ivory, beads
176207

Fig. 47. Hunting visor. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-81. Pastolik, Alaska

49 cms (1). painted wood, ivory, oldsquaw feathers, leather.

grass

176229

Fig. 273, Needlecase. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-81. Cape Vancouver. Alaska
15 cms (1). bone. wood, hair
176232

Fig. 45, Hair clasps (pair). Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-81. Cape Vancouver. Alaska
5 cms (w). walrus ivory
176304

Fig. 315. Pipe. Bering Sea Eskimo
Nelson, col. 1878-81, Nunivak Island. Alaska
40 cms (1), wood, metal, beads, leather, sinew
203720

Fig. 208, Boots. North Alaskan Eskimo
Gilbert, acc. 1899, Port Clarence. Alaska

44 cms (h). ring seal skin, sinew, dehaired sealskin
209550

Fig. 62. Bead necklace. Tlingit
Emmons, acc. 1901. Southeastern Alaska

43 cms (1), glass beads
209567

Fig. 259, Doll, Tlingit

Emmons, acc. 1901. Southeastern Alaska

25 cms (h). marble, hair, cloth, buckskin

209841

Fig. 213. Dali sheep tooth headband. North Alaskan Eskimo
Marsh, acc. 1901, Point Barrow. Alaska

18 cms (dia), leather, beads, Dali sheep teeth, sinew
209941

Fig. 67. Bow, Athapaskan

Emmons, acc. 1901. Southeastern Alaska

148 cms (1). wood, leather string and wrappings

219504

Fig. 281. Chilkat blanket, Tlingit

Landsberg, acc. 1903, Southeastern Alaska

191 cms (w). mountain goat wool, cedar bark. skin, sinew

220185

Fig. 170. Tobacco mortar. Tsimshian

Emmons, acc. 1903, Skeena River. British Columbia

19 cms (h), stone
221184

Fig. 311, Dagger, Tlingit

Emmons, acc. 1903, Killisnoo, S.E. Alaska

67 cms (1), iron, copper, tanned hide, abelone shell

224419

Fig. 412. Club. Tlingit

Emmons, acc. 1904, Fort Wrangell. Alaska

47 cms (1), wood (yew?)

229546b

Fig. 374. Killer whale amulet. Tlingit
acc. 1904. Fort Tongass, Alaska
14 cms (1), walrus ivory
229789

Fig. 8. Chilkat tunic. Tlingit

Emmons, acc. 1904, Southeastern Alaska

100 cms (1). mountain goat wool, cedar bark, hide headline.

sinew

260384

Fig. 192. Kayak model. North Alaskan Eskimo
acc. 1910. Norton Sound, Alaska
75 cms (1). wood, sealskin, sinew, ivory
260441

Fig. 250, Toy harpoon. North Alaskan Eskimo
acc. 1910. Kotzebue Sound. Alaska
46 cms (1). wood. bone, ivory, rawhide, fiber cordage
260531

Fig. 230, Dog sled model, Bering Sea Eskimo
acc. 1910. Norton Sound
32 cms (1). wood, leather, ivory runners
274433

Fig. 59. Ceremonial staff, Tlingit
Harriman, acc. 1912. Southeastern Alaska
208 cms (1). painted wood, hair
274676

Fig. 221. Button blanket. Tsimshian
Brady, acc. 1912, Souteastern Alaska

168 cms (w). wool trade blanket, flannel, pearl buttons, glass
beads
280111

Fig. 208, Pants, Asiatic Eskimo

Moore, col. 1912. St. Lawrence Island. Alaska

77 cms (h). sealskin, caribou fur. sinew

280117

Fig. 258, Leather briefs. Asiatic Eskimo
Moore, col. 1912, St. Lawrence Island. Alaska

38 cms (1), tanned leather, cotton thread, sealskin, caribou hair
280200

Fig. 302. Leather hoop armour. Asiatic Eskimo
Moore, col. 1912. St. Lawrence Island. Alaska
70 cms (h). sealskin, bone toggles
313279

Fig. 394, Spruce root crest hat, Tlingit
acc. 1920. Southeastern Alaska
27 cms (h). painted spruce root basketry
316777

Fig. 355. Bone needle blank. Aleut

acc. 1921, Unalaska Island. Aleutian Is.. Alaska

10 cms (1), bird bone

316851

Fig. 186. Set of small fish hooks. North Alaskan Eskimo
acc. 1921. King Island, Alaska

45 cms (1), fossil ivory, gull tendons, iron hooks, ground stone.

beads, bird beak fragments
324930

Fig. 376, Shaman's bow, Tlingit
Stephens, acc. 1923. Chilkat. Alaska

271 cms (1). painted wood (yellow cedar), human hair, gut
bowstring
337354

Fig. 409, Pipe, Tlingit

Forsyth, acc. 1927, Southeastern Alaska

8 cms (h). wood (walnut)

339831

Fig. 438. Mask. Athapaskan
acc. 1928, Anvik, Yukon River, Alaska
59 cms (h), painted wood, fur, string
339833

Fig. 151. Wrist guard. Punuk

Collins, acc. 1928, St. Lawrence Island, Alaska

10 cms (1). walrus ivory

340331

Fig. 324, Necklace. Bering Sea Eskimo
Collins, acc. 1927, Nunivak Island, Alaska
64 cms (1). beads, ivory, leather
340332

Fig. 299, Necklace, Bering Sea Eskimo
Collins, acc. 1927. Nunivak Island, Alaska
32 cms (1). beads, ivory, metal
340373a

Fig. 198. Charm plaques (pair). Bering Sea Eskimo
Collins, acc. 1927. Nunivak Island. Alaska
17 cms (h). painted wood
341202

Fig. 290, Dance apron, Tlingit
Popenoe, acc. 1928. Southeastern Alaska
111 cms (w). mountain goat wool, cedar bark, trade blanket
cloth, cotton cloth, buckskin, tufted puffin beaks, sinew
341202a. b

Fig. 290. Leggings, Tlingit

Popenoe. acc. 1928, Southeastern Alaska

39 cms (h). mountain goat wool, cedar bark, trade blanket
cloth, cotton cloth, bucksin. tufted puffin beaks, sinew

344677

Fig. 140. Winged object, Punuk

Collins, acc. 1929. Punuk Islands. Alaska

7 cms (h), walrus ivory

356126

Fig. 140, Winged object. Punuk

Collins, col. 1930, St. Lawrence Island. Alaska

13 cms (w). walrus ivory
356128

Fig. 140, Winged object. Punuk

Collins, col. 1930, St. Lawrence Island. Alaska

9 cms (h). walrus ivory

357445

Fig. 449. Chilkat blanket. Tlingit

Evans, acc. 1938. Lynn Canal. Alaska

172 cms (w), moutain goat wool, yellow cedar bark, sinew

358255

Fig. 296. Caribou teeth belt. Bering Sea Eskimo
Evans, acc. 1938. Alaska

103 cms (1). leather, caribou teeth, glass beads, sinew.

cordage

363740

Fig. 157. Maskette, Kachemak

Hrdlicka, acc. 1931. Uyak site. Kodiak Island. Alaska

9 cms (h), bone
365592

Fig. 157. Plaque, Kachemak

Hrdlicka, acc. 1932. Uyak Site, Kodiak Island. Alaska

19 cms (w). walrus ivory

372080

Fig. 142. Needle case, Punuk

Chambers, acc. 1933. Gambell, St. Lawrence Island. Alaska

7 cms (1). walrus ivory

372667

Fig. 42, Baleen basket, North Alaskan Eskimo
Walcott, acc. 1935. Point Barrow. Alaska

10 cms (h). baleen, ivory, fossil ivory
375349

Fig. 156. Lamp. Kachemak

Hrdlicka. acc. 1935. Uyak site. Kodiak Island. Alaska

30 cms (1). stone

378054

Fig. 139. Harpoon socket piece, Old Bering Sea
Jones, acc. 1937. St. Lawrence Island. Alaska

22 cms (1). walrus ivory
381859

Fig. 214. Amulet (human figure). North Alaskan Eskimo
Henderson, acc. 1940. Alaska

5 cms (1), black chert
382259

Fig. 196. Lance tip. North Alaskan Eskimo
acc. 1942. King Island, Alaska
43 cms (1). wood, chert, fiber
383300

Fig. 225, Arrow shaft straightener. North Alaskan Eskimo
Stanley-Brown, acc. 1943. Point Hope, Alaska

14 cms (1). antler
389861

Fig. 75. Shield. Aleut

Hrdlicka. col. 1936. Kagamil Island. Aleutian Is.. Alaska

70 cms (h). painted wood, leather

391806

Fig. 131, Projectile point, Clovis)Folsom
Thompson, acc. 1948. Utukok River site, Alaska

6 cms (1). black chert
393152

Fig, 351, Mask. Bering Sea Eskimo

Eastman, acc 1955. Stebbins, Norton Sound. Alaska

33 cms (h). wood, fur, nails

393156

Fig. 434. Bowl. Bering Sea Eskimo

Eastman, acc 1955. Stebbins. Norton Sound. Alaska

25 cms (1). painted wood
395958

Fig. 166, Harpoon head. Prehistoric Aleut

Hrdlicka. acc. 1938. Umnak Island. Aleutian Is.. Alaska

26 cms (1). sea mammal bone
395999

Fig. 166. Endblade, Prehistoric Aleut

Hrdlicka. acc. 1938. Umnak Island. Aleutian Is.. Alaska

4 cms (1), chert

398238

Fig. 210. Whaling harpoon head. North Alaskan Eskimo
Fellows, acc. 1960. Icy Cape, Alaska
29 cms (1), bone, obsidian, sinew
398246

Fig. 274, Skin scraper. North Alaskan Eskimo
Fellows, acc. 1960. Icy Cape. Alaska

15 cms (1). wood, chert blade, iron wire
398408

Fig. 60. Trap stick. Tlingit

Toner, acc. 1961. Southeastern Alaska

23 cms (1), whalebone
398409

Fig. 60. Trap stick. Tlingit

Toner, acc. 1961. Southeastern Alaska

26 cms (1). whalebone

398410

Fig. 60. Trap stick. Tlingit

Toner, acc. 1961. Southeastern Alaska

28 cms (1). whalebone

351

417767

Fig. 57. Grass basket. Aleut

Hutchinson. , Attu Island. Aleutian Is.. Alaska

10 cms (h). split woven grass

418612

Fig. 12. Auklet parka. Asiatic Eskimo
Moore, col. 1912, St. Lawrence Island. Alaska
111 cms (1). auklet breasts, fur trim, sinew
T-717

Fig. 184, Black cod hook. Tlingit
Southeastern Alaska
15 cms (1). wood, spruce root
T-1611

Fig. 41. Woman's fur pants. Bering Sea Eskimo
Alaska

73 cms (1). caribou skin, dyed leather, fox(?) fur, sinew
T-1676

Fig. 292. Gutskin parka. Asiatic Eskimo

Moore, col. 1912, St. Lawrence Island. Alaska

99 cms (h). walrus gut. auklet beaks and feathers, sinew

T-1886

Fig. 306, Armor vest. North Alaskan Eskimo
Alaska

39 cms (w). heavy hide, bone plates, leather thong, sinev
T-16626

Fig. 302. Boots, Asiatic Eskimo

Moore, col. 1912. St. Lawrence Island. Alaska

33 cms (h). caribou skin, sealskin, yarn, hair embroidery.

trim, sinew
T- 16634

Fig. 302, Fur pants. Asiatic Eskimo

Moore, col. 1912, St. Lawrence Island. Alaska

85 cms (1). sealskin, hair embroidery, dyed seal fur trim

T-23244

Fig. 151. Wrist guard. Punuk
acc. 1988. St. Lawrence Island, Alaska
7 cms (h), walrus ivory
Uncataloged

Fig. 122. Composite lance head. Paleolithic
Dennis Stanford facsimile

23 cms (1), bison bone, chert microblades, pine pitch
PMS: Peabody Museum (Salem, Massachusetts)

E7344

Fig. 999. Gutskin cape. Aleut

Barker, acc. 1835. Aleutian Islands. Alaska

seal intestine, colored skin and sinew thread embroidery

SA: Smithsonian Archives (Washington, D.C.)

Uncataloged

Fig. 101. Field notebook. 1866-7,

19 cms (h). leather cover, paper, ink

SKRM: Sakhalin Regional Museum (Iuzhno)Sakhalinsk,
U.S.S.R.)

3670-44

Fig. 130. Microblade. Paleolithic

Shubin, col 1973. Takoie II site. Sakhalin Island, Siberia

4 cms (1). obsidian
3670-45

Fig. 130. Sidescraper, Paleolithic

Shubin, col 1973, Takoie II site. Sakhalin Island. Siberia

6 cms (1). obsidian

3670-52

Fig. 130, Microblade. Paleolithic

Shubin, col 1973, Takoie II site. Sakhalin Island. Siberia

3 cms (1). obsidian

3670-54

Fig. 130. Triangular endblade. Paleolithic

Shubin, col. 1973. Takoie II site. Sakhalin Island. Siberia

3 cms (1). obsidian

3670-83

Fig. 130. Endblade. Paleolithic

Shubin, col 1973, Takoie II site. Sakhalin Island. Siberia

5 cms (1), obsidian
3670-99

Fig. 130, Microblade fragment. Paleolithic

Shubin, col. 1973, Takoie II site. Sakhalin Island. Siberia

3 cms (1). obsidian

3670-107

Fig. 130, Triangular endblade. Paleolithic

Shubin, col. 1973. Takoie II site. Sakhalin Island. Siberia

3 cms (1). obsidian
3670-109

Fig. 130. Pointed microblade. Paleolithic

Shubin, col. 1973, Takoie II site. Sakhalin Island. Siberia

2 cms (1), obsidian
3670-113

Fig 130, End scraper. Paleolithic

Shubin, col. 1973. Takoie II site. Sakhalin Island. Siberia

6 cms (1), chert

3670-194

Fig 130, Microblade core. Paleolithic

Shubin, col. 1973. Takoie II site. Sakhalin Island. Siberia

4 cms (1), chert
4072-1

Fig. 129, Microblade core. Paleolithic

Shubin, col. 1981, Sokol site. Sakhalin Island. Siberia

8 cms (1). obsidian

4072-2

Fig. 129, Sidescraper. Paleolithic
Shubin, col. 1981, Sokol site. Sakhalin Island, Siberia
j 6 cms (1). obsidian

4072-3

Fig. 129, Triangular endblade. Paleolithic
Shubin, col. 1981, Sokol site. Sakhalin Island. Siberia
fur 4 cms (1), obsidian

4072-4

Fig. 129. Retouched blade. Paleolithic

Shubin, col. 1981, Sokol site. Sakhalin Island. Siberia

4 cms (1), obsidian

4072-7

Fig 129, Flake knife. Paleolithic

Shubin, col. 1981. Sokol site. Sakhalin Island. Siberia

6 cms (1). obsidian

4072-9

Fig 129. Burin. Paleolithic

Shubin, col. 1981, Sokol site. Sakhalin Island. Siberia

4 cms (1). chert

4072-14

Fig. 129, Microblade. Paleolithic

Shubin, col. 1981, Sokol site. Sakhalin Island, Siberia

4 cms (1). obsidian

4072-15

Fig 129. Microblade. Paleolithic

Shubin, col. 1981. Sokol site. Sakhalin Island, Siberia

3 cms (1). obsidian
4072-16

Fig 129. Microblade. Paleolithic

Shubin, col. 1981, Sokol site, Sakhalin Island. Siberia

3 cms (1). obsidian

4072-18

Fig 129. Microblade. Paleolithic

Shubin, col. 1981. Sokol site. Sakhalin Island. Siberia

3 cms (1). obsidian
70-213

Fig 134. Toggling harpoon head. Neolithic
Kozyrev, col. 1957. Nevelsk II site. Sakhalin I . Siberia

8 cms (1). bone
70-214

Fig 134. Toggling harpoon head. Neolithic
Kozyrev, col. 1957. Nevelsk II site. Sakhalin I.. Siberia
1 1 cms (1). bone
70-216

Fig. 134, Barbed harpoon head. Neolithic

Kozyrev, col. 1957. Nevelsk II site. Sakhalin I.. Siberia

9 cms (1). bone
70-219

Fig 134, Toggling harpoon head. Neolithic
Kozyrev, col. 1957, Nevelsk II site, Sakhalin I . Siberia
9 cms (1), bone
795-3764-1

Fig. 130. Core. Paleolithic

Shubin, col. 1973, Takoie II site. Sakhalin Island. Siberia

4 cms (1). flint
795-3764-2

Fig. 130. Conical core. Paleolithic

Shubin, col. 1973. Takoie II site. Sakhalin Island, Siberia
4 cms (1), obsidian

UAFM: University of Alaska Museum (Fairbanks)
DCr73-13

Fig. 132. Microblade, Paleoarctic

Powers, col. 1973-77. Dry Creek site. Alaska

3 cms (1). chert
DCr73-24

Fig. 132, Microblade core. Paleoarctic
Powers, col. 1973-77. Dry Creek site. Alaska

4 cms (1). rhyolite
DCr73-46

Fig. 132. Microblade. Paleoarctic

Powers, col. 1973-77. Dry Creek site. Alaska

3 cms (1). rhyolite

DCr73-47

Fig. 132. Microblade. Paleoarctic

Powers, col. 1973-77. Dry Creek site, Alaska

3 cms (1). rhyolite

DCr73-48

Fig. 132. Microblade. Paleoarctic

Powers, col. 1973-77. Dry Creek site, Alaska

3 cms (1). rhyolite

UA76-1 55-3269

Fig. 132, Burin. Paleoarctic

Powers, col 1973-77. Dry Creek site. Alaska

3 cms (1). chert

UA76-1 55-4097

Fig. 132, Blade core/scraper. Paleoarctic
Powers, col. 1973-77, Dry Creek site. Alaska
3 cms (1). chert
UA77-44-1591

Fig. 132, Elliptical knife, Paleoarctic
Powers, col. 1973-77. Dry Creek site. Alaska
9 cms (1). rhyolite
UA77-44-2659

Fig. 132. Spall scraper. Paleoarctic
Powers, col. 1973-77, Dry Creek site, Alaska
9 cms (1). rhyolite
UA77-44-3884

Fig. 132. Elliptical biface. Paleoarctic
Powers, col. 1973-77. Dry Creek site. Alaska
12 cms (1). rhyolite

UBCMA: University of British Columbia, Museum of
Anthropology (Vancouver, B.C.)

A- 150

Fig. 223. Soul catchers. Tsimshian

Burnett, col. 1920-27, Post Essington. British Columbia

each 7 cms (w), ivory, red ocher, cord

A-151

Fig. 223. Soul catcher. Tsimshian

Burnett, col' 1920-27. Port Essington. British Columbia

15 cms (1). ivory, grass, leather, cord, ocher

A-152

Fig. 223. Fish effigy. Tsimshian

Burnett, col. 1920-27. Port Essington. British Columbia

37 cms (1). wood, ocher

A-153

Fig. 223. Fish effigy. Tsimshian

Burnett, col. 1920-27. Port Essington. British Columbia

36 cms (1). wood, ocher

A-157

Fig. 223, Wooden canoe model with figure. Tsimshian
Burnett, col 1920-27. Port Essington. British Columbia
31 cms (1). wood, ocher

Bill Holm

Uncataloged

Fig. 326. Shaman's drum. Yukaghir
Facsimile by Bill Holm
85 cms (1). hide. wood, iron, sinew
Uncataloged

Fig. 67. Nosepin, Athapaskan
Facsimile by Bill Holm
Uncataloged

Fig. 67. Dentalium shell hairband, Athapaskan

Facsimile by Bill Holm

Uncataloged

Fig. 67, Dentalium shell earrings, Athapaskan
Facsimile by Bill Holm

352

Notes

The American Museum's Jesup North Pacific
Expedition

1 . For related information see two additional articles by
Stanley A. Freed. Ruth S. Freed, and Laila Williamson:
"Scholars Amid Squalor," Natural History, March 1988.
pp. 60-68; and "Capitalist Philanthropy and Russian
Revolutionaries: The Jesup North Pacific Expedition
(1897—1902)," American Anthropologist, vol. 90(1), pp. 7—
25 (1988). The authors thank Douglas Cole, May Ebihara.
Richard Gould. Aldona Jonaitis, Laurel Kendall, Vittorio
Maestro, Jill Neitzel, and David Hurst Thomas for
commenting on various drafts of the foregoing papers,
Karen Pedersen and Geraldine Santoro for research
assistance, and Renate Khambatta for her translations
from German to English.

The sources of the letters cited in this essay are
identified as follows: DA for the archives of the
Department of Anthropology of the American Museum of
Natural History; AMNH for the archives of the American
Museum of Natural History; and BPP for the Boas
Professional Papers at the American Philosophical Society.
The authors used a microfilm version of the BBP at the
American Museum. We thank archivist Belinda Kaye,
Department of Anthropology archives, for her assistance.

Ancient Peoples of the North Pacific Rim

I . Siberian. Alaskan, Canadian, and Japanese data for figs.
2 and 3 were collected and analyzed with aid from the
National Geographic Society, National Science Foundation.
IREX (International Research and Exchanges Board). USSR
Academy of Sciences, and Arizona State University Research
Committee. Linda Nuss Watson handled much of the com¬
puter analysis; Jacqueline and Korri Dee Turner helped with
some data gathering. Collections were examined, and as¬
sistance provided by many individuals: Smithsonian Insti¬
tution, National Museum of Natural History, Washington,
D.C. (J.L. Angel, D. Ubelaker, T.D. Stewart, B.J. Meggers);
American Museum of Natural History, New York (I. Tattersall,
H.L. Shapiro, D.H. Thomas); Peabody Museum. Harvard
University. Cambridge (W.W. Howells, E. Trinkhaus); Na¬
tional Museum of Man, Ottawa (J. Cybulski); Field Museum.
Chicago (G. Cole); Lowie Museum. Berkeley (F. Norick);
Provincial Museum, Victoria (G. Boehm); Simon Fraser Uni¬
versity. Burnaby (R. Shutler. R. Carlson); Institute of Eth¬
nography, Moscow (A. A. Zubov, S.A. Arutiunov, A. Pestria-
kov, V.P. Alekseev), Institute of Ethnography, Leningrad (II
Gokhman, A. Kozintsev); Moscow State University (V.P.
Chtetzov, S. Efimova); University of Oregon. Eugene (D.
Dumond); University of Alaska, Anchorage (W. and K.
Workman); Panam Institute. Copenhagen (B. Jorgensen, P.O.
Pedersen, P. Bennike); Musee de 1' Homme. Paris (R. Gessain,

J. Robert-Lamblin); University of Tokyo (K. Hanihara).

Art and Culture Change at the Tlingit-Eskimo
Border

1. Russian writers frequently included the Koniag and the
Chugach in their term "Aleut," so that early captions and
labels may use it in that generic sense. These two hunters
were more likely Chugach or Koniag. since there seems to
be no evidence for true Aleut use of spruce-root hats.

2. Documentation on early collections is often poor or
nonexistent. In many cases tribal attributions were added
years after collection, often by people who had little idea of
what the material was. Where documentation was question¬
able or nonexistent. I have attributed hats to Tlingit or
Pacific Eskimo origin based on my understanding of early
historic period Tlingit design conventions and the degree to
which the designs on the hats conform to them. In a few
cases the choice was very difficult, but usually the hats
seemed to be clearly one or the other.

3. A hat in the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography
in Leningrad, documented as Koniag and collected by Illia
Voznesenskii (593-34), is identical in style and nearly in
detail to one in the National Museum of Finland (45b),
collected about the same time by Arvid Adolph Etholen and
cataloged as Tlingit. There is. of course, always the possibility
that some hats collected from the Tlingit could have been
acquired by them from the Chugach or Koniag. but I believe
that it is usually possible to identify their origin on the basis
of style.

4. A hat in the Billings collection in Leningrad (562-5) is
identified as Tlingit (Razumovskaia 1967:plate VI, 3). but
details of the design clearly violate the principles of the
formline system. Since the Billings Expedition in 1790
reached only as far east as the mouth of the Copper River,
it is more likely that this hat is Pacific Eskimo in origin, as
the character of its painting implies. Razumovskaia' s paper
(1967) on Northwest Coast basketry includes diagrams and
descriptions of thirteen spruce-root hats from the Tlingit
and Pacific Eskimo. Each hat is shown in a plan view and a
front or rear elevation. Although the drawings are impres¬
sive, they omit or distort many details, making it impossible
to determine from them the degree of adherence to formline
principles.

5. Interestingly, the Tlingit man in Alexander Postels' water-
color of an Aleut, a Koniag. and a Tlingit (Fig. 2; Collins et
al. 1973:280; Henry 1984:plate 4) is also wearing his hat
backwards, perhaps for the same reason. The hat and the
rest of his regalia are now in the Anthropological Museum
of the Lomonosov State University, Moscow.

Pacific Eskimo painted hats examined:

One-step structure

British Museum VAN 191

British Museum Van 190

British Museum 2239

British Museum NWC 8

Cambridge University Museum 49.205

Leiden Museum 1-1410

Leiden Museum 1-1411

Museum of America, Madrid 191

Museum of America. Madrid 194

Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Leningrad
536-12

Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Leningrad
539-1

Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, Leningrad
562-5

Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Leningrad
633-16

Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Leningrad
2520-16

Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Leningrad
2520-18

Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, Leningrad
2520-20

Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Leningrad
5795-19

Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Leningrad
5795-21

National Museum of Finland 45c
Turku Historical Museum 82(255)

One-step with beads and whiskers
Denver Art Museum YT1-149

Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Leningrad
5795-23

Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation
Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation
National Museum of Finland 90
National Museum of Finland 5307
National Museum of Natural History 11378
National Museum of Natural History 74720
National Museum of Natural History 360,667
Washington State Historical Society

Two-step structure
British Museum NWC 4

Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Leningrad
344-73

Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, Leningrad
593-34

Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, Leningrad
2520-19

Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Leningrad
2520-27

Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, Leningrad
5795-22

Museum of Ethnography. Berlin IV A 6174
Museum of Ethnography. Berlin IV A 9380
Museum of Ethnography, Munich 1 34
National Museum of Finland 45
National Museum of Finland 45b
National Museum of Finland 4911:6
Oakland Museum White Loan 16
Other

Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, Leningrad
633-17

Museum of Ethnography. Vienna 279

353

References

Ackerman. Robert E.

1982 The Neolithic-Bronze Age Cultures of Asia and
the Norton Phase of Alaska Prehistory. Arctic
Anthropology 1 9(2): 1 1—38.

1984 Prehistory of the Asian Eskimo Zone. Handbook
of North American Indians 5 (Arctic). Washing¬
ton, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, pp. 106-118.

Ackerman. R. E.; Hamilton. T. D.; and Stuckenrath. R.

1979 Early Culture Complexes on the Northern North¬
west Coast. Canadian Journal of Archaeology
3:195-209.

Acosta, Jose de

1 598 Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias. Enchuy-
sen: Jacob Lenaertsz Meyn [reprinted Madrid
1792. 2 volumes].

Aigner. Jean S.

1 978 Activity Zonation in a 4,000-year-old Aleut House.

Chaluka Village. Umnak Island. Alaska. Anthro¬
pological Papers of the University of Alaska

19(1 ): 1 1—25.

Aigner, Jean S., and Veltre. Douglas

1976 The Distribution and Pattern of Umqan Burial
on Southwest Umnak Island. Arctic Anthropol¬
ogy 13(2): 1 1 3—1 27.

Alaska Department of Labor

1986 Alaska Economic Trends. November. Juneau,
Alaska: State of Alaska.

Alaska State Council on the Arts

1981 1981 Native Art Competition: Wood, Ivory, and

Bone. Anchorage. Alaska.

Alexseev, Valeri P.

1979 Anthropometry of Siberian Peoples. The First
Americans: Origins. Affinities, and Adaptations.
Edited by William Laughlin and Albert B. Harper.
New York: Gustav Fisher, pp. 57-90.

American Anthropologist

1930 Anthropological Notes and News. American An¬
thropologist 32:375-377.

1938 Notes and News: Recent Deaths. American An¬
thropologist 40:345.

Ames. Kenneth M.

1981 The Evolution of Social Ranking on the North¬
west Coast of North America. American Antiq¬
uity 46(41:789-805.

Anderson, D. D.

1974—75 Trade Network among the Selawik Eskimos.

Northwest Alaska, during the Late Nineteenth
and Early Twentieth Centuries. Folk 16/17:63—

72.

Antropova, V. V.. and Kuznetsova. V. G.

1964 The Chukchi. The Peoples of Siberia, edited by
M. G. Levin and L. P. Potapov. Chicago: Uni¬
versity of Chicago Press, pp. 799-835. (Trans¬
lated from Russian edition, 1956.)

Arnold, R.. et al.

1976 Alaska Native Land Claims. Anchorage, Alaska:
Alaska Native Foundation.

Arsen'ev, V. K.

1926 Lesnye liudi — Udekheitsy [The forest people:
The Udegey]. Vladivostok.

Arutiunov, S. A., and Sergeev. D. A.

1975 Problemy etnicheskoi istorii Beringomor'ia (Ek-
venskii mogil'nik) [Problems of ethno-history of
the Bering Sea region (Ekven burial site)]. Mos¬
cow: Nauka.

Arutiunov. S. A.; Krupnik, I. I.; and Chlenov, M. A.

1982 "Kitovaia Alleia ", Drevnosti ostrovov proliva
Seniavina. [The "Whale Alley"; antiquities of
the Seniavin Strait islands]. Moscow; Institut
Etnografii Nauka.

Bancroft, H. H.

1886 History of Alaska. New York: McGraw-Hill Book
Co.

Barnhardt, Ray, et al.

1979 Small High School Programs for Rural Alaska.

A Preliminary Report of the Small High school
Project 1 . Fairbanks. Alaska: Center for Cross-
Cultural Studies, School of Education, University
of Alaska.

Barratt. Glynn

1981 Russia in Pacific Waters, 1715-1825. A Survey
of the Origins of Russia's Naval Presence in the
North and South Pacific. Vancouver/London:
University of British Columbia Press.

Beechey, F. W.

1831 Narrative of a Voyage to the Pacific and Bering's
Strait, to Co-operate with the Polar Expeditions;
Performed in His Majesty's Ship "Blossom'' . . .
in the Years 1825. 26, 27. London: Colburn &
Bendy.

Belov, M. I.

1955 Semen Dezhnev [Simon Dezhnev], Moscow:
Morskoi Transport.

1956 Arkticheskoe moreplavanie s drevneishikh vre-
men do serediny XIX veka. Istoriia otkrytiia i
osvoeniia Severnogo Morskogo Puti T. 1 [Arctic
navigation from the ancient times to the mid¬
nineteenth century. Vol. 1 of the history of the
discovery and navigation of the Northern Sea
route], Moscow: Morskoi Transport.

1973 Podvig Semena Dezhneva. [Simon Dezhnev's
exploit]. Moscow.

Berger. Thomas

1985 Village Journey. New York: Hill and Wang.

Birket-Smith, Kaj

1953 The Chugach Eskimo. Nationalmuseets Skrifter,
Etnografish Raekke 6. Copenhagen.

Black, Lydia

1973 The Nivkh (Gilyak) of Sakhalin and the Lower
Amur. Arctic Anthropology 10(1): 1-1 10.

1982 Aleut Art. Anchorage, Alaska: Aleutian/Pribilof
Islands Association.

In press. The Bentwood Hats of Alaska: Symbols of Power
and Identity. Juneau Alaska State Museum.

Boas, Franz

1897 The Decorative Art of the Indians of the North
Pacific Coast. Bulletin of the American Museum
of Natural History 9: 1 23—1 76.

1903 The Jesup North Pacific Expedition. American
Museum Journal 3(5):72— 1 19.

1905 The Jesup North Pacific Expedition, Proceedings
of the International Congress of Americanists,
13th Session. New York 1902. pp. 91-100.

1910 Ethnological Problems in Canada. Journal of the
Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain
and Ireland. 40:529—539.

1916 Tsimshian Mythology. 31st Annual Report of
the Bureau of American Ethnology 1909-1910.
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing
Office, pp. 29-1037.

1925 America and the Old World. Proceedings of the
21st Congress of Americanists 11:21-38. Gote-
borg.

1927 Primitive Art. Oslo: Institutet for Sammenlig-

[1955] nende Kulturforskning. (Reprinted 1955, New
York: Dover Publications.)

1933 Relationships Between North-west America and

North-east Asia. In: The American Aborigines:
Their Origin and Antiquity, edited by Diamond
Jenness, pp. 357—370. University of Toronto
Press.

1937 Waldemar Bogoras. American Anthropologist

39:314-315.

Bockstoce, J. R.

1986 Whales, Ice, and Men: The History of Whaling
in the Western Arctic. Seattle: University of
Washington Press.

Bogoras, Waldemar (see also Bogoraz)

1901 The Chukchi of Northeastern Asia. American
Anthropologist 3:80-108.

1 902 Folklore of Northeastern Asia as Compared with
that of Northwestern America. American An¬
thropologist 4:577-683.

1904-09 The Chukchee. The Jesup North Pacific Expe-

[1975] dition 7. Memoirs of the American Museum of
Natural History. Leiden/New York. (Reprinted
1975, New York: AMS Press.)

1910 Chukchee Mythology. The Jesup North Pacific

[1975] Expedition 8(1), Memoirs of the American Mu¬
seum of Natural History. Leiden/New York. (Re¬
printed 1975. New York: AMS Press.)

1913 The Eskimo of Siberia. The Jesup North Pacific

[1975] Expedition 8(3), Memoirs of the American Mu¬
seum of Natural History. Leiden/New York. (Re¬
printed 1975, New York: AMS Press.)

Bogoraz, Vladimir Germanovich (see also Bogoras)

1901b Ocherk material'nago byta olennykh chukchei
sostavlennyi na osnovanii kolletsii N. L. Gon-
datti, nakhodiashchikhcia v Etnograficheskom
Muzee Imperatorskoi Akadimii Nauk [Sketch of
the Reindeer Chukchi material culture based on
the Gondatti collection at the Museum of Eth¬
nography of the Imperial Academy of Sciences],
Sbornik Muzeia Antropologii i Etnografii 2. St.
Petersburg.

1934 Chukchi [The Chukchi], Part 1. Leningrad.

1935 Drevneishie elementy v iazyke aziatskikh Eski-
mosov [Ancient elements in the language of the
Asiatic Eskimo]. Sbornik AN SSSR 16.

1939 Chukchi [The Chukchi], Part 2. Leningrad.

Bolles. Lt. T. Dix

1883 Chinese Relics in Alaska. Proceedings of the
U.S. National Museum 1 5(899): 22 1 — 222.

1889 Preliminary Catalogue of the Eskimo Collections
in the U.S. National Museum. U.S. National
Museum Annual Report for 1887. pp. 335-365.

Borden. Charles E.

1983 Prehistoric Art of the Lower Frazer Region.
Indian Traditions of the Northwest Coast, edited
by Roy L. Carlson. Burnaby. British Columbia:
Simon Frazer University, pp 130—165.

Briggs. Jean L.

1970 Never in Anger: Portrait of an Eskimo Family.
Cambridge. Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Brooks. Charles Wolcott

1876 Report of Japanese Vessels Wrecked in the
North Pacific Ocean, from the Earliest Records
to the Present Time. Proceedings of the Cali¬
fornia Academy of Sciences, 6.

Burch, E. S.. Jr.

1974 Eskimo Warfare in Northwest Alaska. Anthro¬
pological Papers of the University of Alaska
16:1-14.

1978 Traditional Eskimo Societies in Northwest Alaska.

[1980] in Alaska Native Culture and History, edited by

Y. Kotani and W. B. Workman. National Museum
of Ethnology. Senri Ethnological Series 4 Osaka.
Japan, pp. 253—304. (Reprinted 1980.)

1979 Indians and Eskimos in North Alaska, 1816-
1977: A Study in Changing Ethnic Relations.
Arctic Anthropology 16:123-151.

1981 The Traditional Eskimo Hunters of Point Hope.

Alaska: 1800-1875. Barrow. Alaska: North Slope
Borough.

1984 Kotzebue Sound Eskimo. Handbook of North
American Indians 5 (Arctic). Washington, D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution, pp. 303-319.

Burch. E. S.. Jr., and Corell. T. C.

1972 Alliance and Conflict: Inter-regional Relations in
North Alaska. Alliance in Eskimo Society, edited
by D. L. Guempie. Seattle: University of Wash¬
ington Press, pp. 17-39.

Calista Professional Services, Inc.

1985 Yukon-Kuskokwim Region Arts and Crafts Op¬
portunities Study.

Cannizzo, Jeanne

1983 George Hunt and the Invention of Kwakiutl
Culture. Canadian Review of Sociology and
Anthropology 20:44—58.

Carlson, Roy L.

1979 The Early Period on the Central Coast of British
Columbia. Canadian Journal of Archaeology
3:211-228.

1983 Prehistory of the Northwest Coast. Indian Art
Traditions of the Northwest Coast, edited by
Roy L. Carlson. Burnaby, British Columbia: Si¬
mon Frazer University, pp. 13-32.

Carpenter, Edmund

1973 Some Notes on the Separate Realities of Eskimo
and Indian Art. The Far North, 2,000 Years of
American Eskimo and Indian Art. edited by
Henry Collins. Frederica de Laguna, Edmund
Carpenter, and Peter Stone. Washington. D.C..
National Gallery of Art. pp. 281-289.

Chlenov. Mikhail A., and Krupnik. Igor I.

1984 Whale Alley: A Site on the Chukchi Peninsula.
Siberia. Expedition 26(2):6 — 1 5.

354

Chowning, Ann

1962 Raven Myths in Northwestern North America
and Northeastern Asia. American Anthropolo¬
gist 1(1): 1-6.

Clark. Donald W.

1970 The Late Kachemak Tradition at Three Saints
and Crag Point, Kodiak Island. Alaska. Arctic
Anthropology 6(2):73— 1 1 1 .

1974 Koniag Prehistory: Archaeological Investiga¬

tions at Late Prehistoric Sites on Kodiak Island.
Alaska. Tubinger Monographien sur Urgeschite
1 . Stuttgart.

1979 Ocean Bay: An Early North Pacific Maritime
Culture. National Museum of Man. Mercury
Series. Archaeological Survey of Canada. Paper
no. 86. Ottawa.

1984 Pacific Eskimo: Historical Ethnography. Hand¬
book of North American Indians 5 (Arctic).
Washington, D C.: Smithsonian Press.

Clark. Gerald H.

1977 Archaeology on the Alaska Peninsula: The Coast
of Shelikof Strait. University of Oregon Anthro¬
pological Papers 13.

Cole, Douglas

1985 Captured Heritage: The Scramble for Northwest
Coast Artifacts. Seattle/London: University of
Washington Press.

Collins. Henry B.

1937 The Archeology of St. Lawrence Island. Smith¬
sonian Miscellaneous Collections 96(1). Wash¬
ington. D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.

1946 Wilderness Exploration and Alaska's Purchase.

The Living Wilderness. December. The Wilder¬
ness Society.

1971 Composite Masks: Chinese and Eskimo. Anthro-
pologica n.s. 13(1 — 2):271 — 278.

Collins. Henry B.; de Laguna. Frederica: Carpenter. Edmund;

and Stone. Peter

1 973 The Far North. 2. 000 Years of American Eskimo
and Indian Art. Washington, D.C.: National Gal¬
lery of Art.

Cook. James

1967 The Voyage of the "Resolution" and "Discov¬
ery". 1776-1780. The Journals of Captain James
Cook on His Voyages of Discovery, edited by J.
C. Beaglehole (in 4 vols., 1955—1974), vol. 3.
pt. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
(Selections from original by Cook: A Voyage to
the Pacific Ocean ... in the Years 1 776. 1 777.

. . . London: W. and A. Strahan. 1784.)

Count, Earl W.

1949 The Earth-Diver and the Rival Twins: a Clue to
Time Correlation in North-Eurasiatic and North
American Mythology. Selected Papers of the
29th International Congress of Americanists
111:55-62, edited by Sol Tax. University of
Chicago Press.

Covarrubias. Miguel

1954 The Eagle, the Jaguar, and the Serpent: Indian
Art of the Americas; North America: Alaska,
Canada, and the United States. New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, Inc.

Cowling, Elizabeth

1978 The Eskimos, the American Indians, and the
Surrealists. Art History l(4):484-500.

Coxe, William

1780 Account of the Russian Discoveries between

[1966] Asia and America. London: Cadell and Davies.

(Reprinted 1966, March of America Facsimile
Series 40. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University
Microfilms.)

Cracroft, Sophia

1981 Lady Franklin Visits Sitka. Alaska 1870: The
Journal of Sophia Cracroft. Sir John Franklin's
Niece. Edited by R. N. DeArmond. Anchorage.
Alaska. Alaska Historical Society.

Curtis. Edward S.

1930 The North American Indian 20. Norwood, Mass.:

[19761 Plimpton Press. (Reprinted 1976, New York/San
Francisco/London: Johnson Reprint Corpora¬
tion.)

Dali, William Healy

1870 Alaska and Its Resources. Boston: Lee and She¬
ll 970] pard. (Reprinted 1970. New York: Arno Press,
Inc.)

1873 Notes on the Pre-historic Remains in the Aleu¬
tian Islands. Proceedings of the California Acad¬
emy of Sciences 4:283-287. San Francisco.

1876 On the Remains of Later Pre-Historic Man Ob¬
tained from Caves in the Catherina Archipelago.
Alaska Territory, and Especially from the Caves
of the Aleutian Islands, pp. 1-40. Published in

1880 in Smithsonian Contributions to Knowl¬
edge 22(318). Washington, D.C.

1877 On Succession in the Shell-Heaps of the Aleutian
Islands, in Tribes of the Extreme Northwest,
edited by W. H. Dali and G. Gibbs. Contributions
to North American Ethnology 1. U.S. Geograph¬
ical and Geological Survey. Washington, D.C.

1881 On the So-called Chukchi and Namollo People
of Eastern Siberia. American Naturalist
15(10):857— 868.

1884 On Masks, Labrets, and Certain Aboriginal Cus¬
toms. Third Annual Report of the Bureau of
American Ethnology for the Years 1881—1882.
Washington, D.C. pp. 67—203.

Dauenhauer, Nora Marks, and Dauenhauer, Richard (Editors)

1987 Haa Shuka. Our Ancestors: Tlingit Oral Narra¬
tives. Juneau, Alaska: Sealaska Heritage Foun¬
dation.

Davis, Barbara Starr, and Davis, Richard

1974 Tongues and Totems: Comparative Arts of the
Pacific Basin. Anchorage: Alaska International
Art Institute.

Davydov, Gavriil Ivanovich

1977 Two Voyages to Russian America, 1802—1807,
edited by Richard Pierce. Kingston, Ontario:
Limestone Press. (Translated by Colin Bearne
from Dvukratnoe puteshestvie v Ameriku mor-
skikh ofitserov Khvostova i Davydova, pisannoe
sim poslednim in two parts. St. Petersburg.
1810-1812.)

Debets, G. F.

1948 Paleoantropologiia SSSR [Paleoanthropology of
the U.S.S.R.] Trudy Instituta Etnografiia n.s. 4.
Moscow/Leningrad: ANSSSR.

de Laguna. Frederica

1934 The Archaeology of Cook Inlet. Alaska. Univer-

[1975] sity of Pennsylvania Museum. (Reprinted with

introduction. 1975, Anchorage: Alaska Histori¬
cal Society.)

1972 Under Mount Saint Elias: The History and Cul¬
ture of the Yakutat Tlingit. Smithsonian Contri¬
butions to Anthropology 7 (in 3 parts). Wash¬
ington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Dikov, N. N.

1965 The Stone Age of Kamchatka and the Chukchi
Peninsula in the Light of New Archaeological
Data. Arctic Anthropology 3 ( 1 ) : 1 0 — 25. (Trans¬
lated from Trudy Severo-Vostochnogo Kom-
pleksnogo Nauchno-Issledovatel'skogo Instituta
8:5—27. Magadan. 1964.)

1968 The Discovery of the Palaeolithic in Kamchatka
and the Problem of the Initial Occupation of
America. Arctic Anthropology 5( 1 ): 1 91 — 203.
(Translated from Istoriia i kul'tura narodov sev-
era Dal'nego Vostoka, Trudy Severo-vosto-
chnogo Kompleksnogo Nauchno-Issledovatel'sk-
ogo Instituta 17:16—31. Moscow, 1967.)

1972 Les Petroglyphes de Pegtymel' et leur Apparte-
nance Ethnique. Inter-Nord 12:245-261.

1977 Arkheologicheskie pamiatniki Kamchatka Chu-
kotki i Verkhnei Kolymy [Archeological sites of
Kamchatka, Chukotka, and the Upper Kolyma],
Moskow: Nauka.

Dmytryshin. B,; Crownhart-Vaughan, E.A.P., and Vaughan,

T. (Editors)

1985 Russia's Conquest of Siberia, 1558-1700: A
Documentary Record. To Siberia and Russian
America: Three Centuries of Russian Eastward
Expansion. Vol. 1. Portland. Oregon: Western
Imprints.

Doig, Ivan

1 980 Winter Brothers: A Season at the Edge of Amer¬
ica. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Drucker, Phillip

1951 The Northern and Central Nootkan Tribes. Bu¬
reau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 144. Wash¬
ington. D.C.: Smithsonian Institution

1958 The Native Brotherhoods. Modern Inter-Tribal
Organization of the Northwest Coast. Bureau of
American Ethnology. Bulletin 168. Washington.
D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.

Duff, Wilson

1964 The Indian History of British Columbia. Anthro¬
pology in British Columbia. Memoir 5, Vol. 1,
The Impact of the White Man.

1975 Images: Stone: B.C. Thirty Centuries of North¬
west Coast Indian Sculpture. Saanichton, British
Columbia: Hancock House Publishers.

1981 The World Is as Sharp as a Knife: Meaning in

[1983] Northwest Coast Art. The World Is as Sharp as

a Knife: An Anthology in Honour of Wilson Duff,
edited by Donald W. Abbott. Victoria, British

Columbia: British Columbia Provincial Museum,
pp. 209-224. (Reprinted in Indian Art Traditions
of the Northwest Coast, edited by Roy L. Carl¬
son. 1983, Burnaby, British Columbia: Simon
Frazer University, pp. 47-66.)

1981a Thoughts on the Nootka Canoe. The World Is
as Sharp as a Knife: An Anthology in Honour
of Wilson Duff, edited by Donald W. Abbott.
Victoria, British Columbia: British Columbia Pro¬
vincial Museum, pp. 201—6.

Dumond, Don E.

1981 Archaeology on the Alaska Peninsula: The Nak-
nek Region. University of Oregon Anthropolog¬
ical Papers 2 1 .

1 984 Prehistory: Summary. Handbook of North Amer¬

ican Indians 5 (Arctic). Washington, D.C.: Smith¬
sonian Institution, pp. 72—79.

1987 A Reexamination of Eskimo-Aleut Prehistory.
American Anthropologist 89:32-56.

Duncan. Kate

1984 Some Warmer Tone: Alaska Athabascan Bead
Embroidery. Fairbanks, Alaska: University of
Alaska Museum.

1988 Northern Athapaskan Art: A Beadwork Tradi¬
tion. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Dyson. George

1986 Baidarka. Edmonds, Washington: Alaska North¬
west Publishing Company.

Elliott, Henry W.

1881 The Seal Islands of Alaska. U.S. Department of

[1976] the Interior. Washington. D.C.: U.S. Government

Printing Office. (Reprinted 1976, Kingston, On¬
tario: Limestone Press.)

Emmons, George T.

n.d.a. Notes on Tlingit. British Columbia Provincial
Archives.

n.d.b Collection Notes. Unpublished. American Mu¬
seum of Natural History.

1907 The Chilkat Blanket. Memoirs of the American
Museum of Natural History 3(4):229-277.

1916 The Whale House of the Chilkat. Anthropological
Papers of the American Museum of Natural
History 19. pt. 1. pp. 1-33.

Emmons. G. T., and de Laguna, F.

In press The Tlingit Indians. Seattle: University of Wash¬
ington Press.

Fagan, Brian M.

1987 The Great Journey: The Peopling of Ancient
America. New York/London: Thames and Hud¬
son.

Federal Field Committee for Development Planning in Alaska.

1968 Alaska Natives and the Land. Anchorage, Alaska.

Fienup-Riordan, Ann

1983 The Nelson Island Eskimo. Anchorage: Alaska
Pacific University Press.

1986 Nick Charles, Sr.: Worker in Wood. The Artist
Behind the Work, edited by Suzi Jones. Fair¬
banks: University of Alaska Museum, pp. 25-
57.

1987 The Mask: The Eye of the Dance. Arctic An¬
thropology 24(12):40-55.

Fisher, Raymond H.

In press Early Russian Aspirations for an American Em¬
pire. Paper presented at the 2d International
Conference on Russian America. Sitka, Alaska.
August 19, 1987. Conference Proceedings.
Kingston, Ontario: Limestone Press,

Fisher, William J.

1883 Catalogue of a Collection of Ethnological Spec¬
imens Obtained from the Ugashagmut Tribe,
Ugashak River, Bristol Bay. Alaska. Proceedings
of the U.S. National Museum 7(11): 161— 165.

Fitzhugh, William W.

1975 Introduction. In: Prehistoric Maritime Adapta¬
tions of the Circumpolar Zone, edited by William
W. Fitzhugh. pp. 1-18. The Hague: Mouton.

1984 Images from the Past: Thoughts on Bering Sea
Eskimo Art and Culture. Expedition 26(2):24—
39.

Fitzhugh, William W.. and Kaplan. Susan A.

1982 Inua: Spirit world of the Bering Sea Eskimo.
Washington, D C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Fitzhugh, William W.. and Selig, Ruth O.

1981 The Smithsonian's Alaska Connection: Nine¬
teenth Century Explorers and Anthropologists.
Alaska Journal: A 1981 Collection. Alaska North¬
west Publishing Company, pp. 193—208.

Fladmark. Knut R.

1975 A Paleoecological Model for Northwest Coast
Prehistory. National Museum of Man. Mercury
Series. Archeological Survey of Canada Paper
no. 43. Ottawa.

355

Frachtenberg, Leo J.

1921 The Ceremonial Societies of the Quileute Indi¬
ans. American Anthropologist 23:320—52.

Friday, Joe

1984 Interview. August 7, Chevak, Alaska. 14(h)(1)
Site Survey. Anchorage, Alaska: Bureau of In¬
dian Affairs Realty Office.

1985 Interview. Feburary 19. translated by Louise
Leonard. San Francisco: Lansburg Productions.

Frost, O. W. (Editor)

1970 Cross-Cultural Arts in Adaska. Anchorage, Alaska:
Alaska Methodist University Press.

Gerasimov, M. M.

1 964 The Paleolithic Site Mal'ta: Excavations of 1 956-

1957. The Archaeology and Geomorphology of
Northern Asia, edited and translated by H.
Michael. Toronto: Arctic Institute of North Amer¬
ica. pp. 3-32.

Gjessing, Gutorm

1 944 The Circumpolar Stone Age. Acta Archaeologica

Gladwin. Harold S.

1947 Men Out of Asia. New York: McGraw-Hill Book
Co.

Golder, Frank

1914 Russian Expansion on the Pacific 1641—1850.
Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Co.

Golovnin. Vasilii Mikhailovich

1979 Around the World on the "Kamchatka," 1817-
1819. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii.
(Translated from Puteshestvie vokrug sveta,
1822.)

Greenberg, Joseph H.

1987 Language in the Americas. Stanford: Stanford
University Press.

Greenberg, Joseph H.; Turner. Christy G., II; and Zegura.
Stephen L.

1986 The Settlement of the Americas: A Comparison
of the Linguistic, Dental, and Genetic Evidence.
Current Anthropology 27(5): 477-497.

Gruening, Ernest

1968 The State of Alaska. New York: Random House.

Gurvich. I. S.

1987 Novye dannye po traditsionnoi obriadnosti ko-
riakov. Traditsionnye verovaniia i byt narodov
Sibiri [New data on the traditional rituals of the
Koriak, in Traditional beliefs and life of the
peoples of Siberia], Novosibirsk.

Gurvich, I. S. (Editor)

1980 Semeinaia obriadnost narodov Sibiri [Family
rituals of the peoples of Siberia], Moscow: Nauka.

Hallowell, A. I.

1926 Bear Ceremonialism in the Northern Hemi¬
sphere. American Anthropologist 28:1-173.

Hamilton, Thomas D.; Reed, Katherine M.; and Thorson,

Robert M.

1 986 Glaciation in Alaska: The Geologic Record. Alaska

Geological Society.

Hatt, Gudmund

1934 North American and Eurasian Culture Connec¬
tions. Proceedings of the Fifth Pacific Science
Congress, pp. 2755-2763. University of Toronto
Press.

1949 Asiatic Influences in American Folklore. Det.

Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab. Historisk-
Filologiske Meddelelser 3 1(6): 1-1 22. Copen¬
hagen.

1969 Arctic Skin Clothing in Eurasia and America:
An Ethnographic Study. Arctic Anthropology
5(2): 1 — 1 32. (Translated from J. H. Schultz, For-
lagsboghandel Graebes Bogtrykkeri. 1914.)

Haven, Samuel F.

1856 Archaeology of the United States. Smithsonian
Contributions to Knowledge. Washington. D C.

pp. 1-168.

Healy. Michael A.

1887 Report of the Cruise of the Steamer "Corwin."

Report of the Cruise of the Revenue Marine
Steamer "Corwin" in the Arctic Ocean. 1885.
Washington, D.C.: U S. Government Printing
Office, pp. 5-20.

1889 Report of the Cruise of the Revenue Marine
Steamer "Corwin" in the Arctic Ocean in the
Year 1884. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government
Printing Office.

Heine-Geldern, Robert

1966 A Note on Relations between the Art Styles of
the Maori and of Ancient China. Weiner Beitrage
zur Kulturgeschichte und Linguistik. Band XV:47—
68. Wein.

Heizer, Robert F.

1943 Aconite Poison Whaling in Asia and America:

An Aleutian Transfer to the New World. An¬

thropological Papers 24. Bureau of American
Ethnology Bulletin 133:415—468. Washington.
D.C.

1956 Archaeology of the Uyak Site, Kodiak Island,
Alaska. University of California Anthropological
Records 17(1). Berkeley.

Henry, John F.

1984 Early Maritime Artists of the Pacific Northwest
Coast. 1741-1841. Seattle: University of Wash¬
ington Press.

Hildebrand, Hans

1883 De lagre naturfolkens knost, Studier och

forskningar . by Nordenskiold. pp. 303-402.

(Translated as Kunst der niedern Naturvolker.
in Nordenskiold, 1885).

Himmelheber. Hans

1938 Eskimokiinstler: Teilergebnis einer Ethnogra-
phischen Expedition in Alaska von Juni 1936
bis April 1937. Stuttgart: Strecker and Schroder.

1953 Eskimolunstler : Ergebnisse einer Reise in Alaska.

2d ed. Eisenach, Germany: Erich Roth-Verlag.

Hoffman, Walter J.

1897 The Graphic Art of the Eskimos, Based upon

[1974] the collections in the National Museum. Annual
Report of the United States National Museum
for 1895. Washington, D C. pp. 739—968. (Re¬
printed 1974, Seattle, Washington: Shorey Book
Store.)

Holm, Bill

1965 Northwest Coast Indian Art: An Analysis of
Form. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

1981 Will the Real Charles Edensaw Please Stand
Up? The Problem of Attribution in Northwest
Coast Indian Art. The World Is as Sharp as a
Knife. Victoria. British Columbia: British Colum¬
bia Provincial "Museum, pp. 175-200.

1983 The Box of Daylight: Northwest Coast Indian
Art. Seattle/London: University of Washington
Press.

1983a Smoky-Top: The Art and Times of Willy Sea¬
weed. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

1987 Spirit and Ancestor: A Century of Northwest
Coast Indian Art at the Burke Museum. Seattle:
University of Washington Press.

Holm, Bill, and Reid, William

1975 Form and Freedom: A Dialogue on Northwest
Coast Indian Art. Houston: Institute for the Arts,
Rice University.

Holmberg, Henrik Johan

1855-63 Ethnographische Skizzen Ueber die Volker des

[1985] Russischen Amerika, Acta Scientiarum Fenni-
cae. (Republished as Holmberg's Ethnographic
Sketches, translated by Fritz Jaensch. 1985,
University of Alaska Press.)

Hooper, Calvin L.

1881 Report of the Cruise of the U.S. Revenue Steamer

" Corwin " in the Arctic Ocean. November 1,
1880. Washington, D C.: U.S. Government Print¬
ing Office.

1 884 Report of the Cruise of the U.S. Revenue Steamer

"Thomas Corwin," in the Arctic Ocean. 1881
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing
Office.

1897 A Report on the Sea-Otter Banks of Alaska, U.S.

Treasury Department Document No. 1977.
Washington, D.C.: Office of the Secretary, Di¬
vision of Revenue Cutter Service.

Hrdlicka, Ales

1944 The Anthropology of Kodiak Island. Philadel¬
phia: Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology.

1945 The Aleutians and Commander Island and Their
Inhabitants. Philadelphia: Wistar Institute of
Anatomy and Biology.

Hsio-Yen Shih

1963 A Chinese Shell-Inlay Motif, 1962 Annual. To¬
ronto: Art and Archaeology Division, Royal On¬
tario Museum, University of Toronto.

Huggins, Eli Lundy

1981 Kodiak and Afognak Life. 1868-1870. Kingston,
Ontario: Limestone Press.

Hughes, Charles C.

1984 Asiatic Eskimo: Introduction. Handbook of North
American Indians 5 (Arctic). Washington, D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution, pp. 243*-246.

Institute of Alaska Native Arts

1984 New Traditions: An Exhibition of Alaska Native
Sculpture. Fairbanks, Alaska.

Iokhel'son, Vladimir Il'ich (see also Jochelson)

1907 Etnolingvisticheskie problemy na severnykh
beregakh Tikhogo okeana. Izvestiia Russkogo
Geograhcheskogo Obshchestva 13 [Ethno-lin-
guistic problems of the Northern Coasts of the
Pacific Ocean, in Bulletin of the Russian Geo¬
graphical Society 13].

- Ivanov, S. V.

1930 Aleut Hunting Headgear and Its Ornamentation.

International Congress of Americanists 23d Ses¬
sion. pp. 477-509.

1937 Medved' v religioznom i dekora tivnom iskusstve
narodnostei Amura. Pamiati V. G. Bogoraza
(1865—1936) [The bear in the religious and
decorative art of the peoples of the Amur, in In
memory of W. G. Bogoras (1865-1936)]. Mos¬
cow/Leningrad: Institut Etnografii. pp. 1^15.

1954 Materialy po izobrazitel'nomu iskusstvu narodov
Sibiri XlX-nachala XX v [Material on the depic¬
tive art of the peoples of Siberia, nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries], Trudy Instituta
Etnografii n.s.22. Moscow/Leningrad: ANSSSR.

1963 Ornament narodov Sibiri kak istoricheskii
istochnik [Ornamentation of the peoples of Si¬
beria as a historical source]. Trudy Instituta
Etnografii. n.s. 81. Moscow/Leningrad: ANSSSR.

Ivanov, S. and V. Stukalov

1975 Ancient Masks of Siberian Peoples. Leningrad:
Aurora Publishers.

Ivashintsov, N. A.

1980 Russian Round-the-World Voyages. 1803-1849.

Edited by Richard Pierce. Kingston, Ontario:
Limestone Press. (Translated by Glynn R. Bar-
ratt from Russkie krugosvetnyia puteshestviia,
s 1803 po 1849 g.. first published as Zapiski
gidrograficheskago departamenta 7-8, St. Pe¬
tersburg, 1848 and 1849.)

Jacobson, Steven A.

1984 Yup'ik Eskimo Dictionary. Fairbanks. Alaska:

Alaska Native Language Center, University of
Alaska.

James, James Alton

1942 The First Scientific Exploration of Russian Amer¬

ica and the Purchase of Alaska. Northwestern
University Studies in the Social Science 4. Ev¬
anston/Chicago.

Jefferson, Thomas

1 787 Notes on Virginia. Richmond: Bibliotheca Amer¬
icana.

Jenness, D.

1929 Little Diomede Island. Bering Strait. Geographic
Review 19:78—86.

Jensen. Doreen, and Sargent, Polly

1986 Robes of Power, Totem Poles on Cloth. Museum
Note 17. Vancouver: University of Columbia
Press/UBC Museum of Anthropology.

Jochelson, Waldemar (see also Iokhel'son)

1 907 Past and Present Subterranean Dwellings of the
Tribes of Northeastern Asia and Northwestern
America. Congres International des American-
istes. 15eme Session, Quebec, pp. 115-128.

1908 The Koryak. The Jesup North Pacific Expedition

[1975] 6, Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural

History. Leiden/New York. (Reprinted 1975,
New York: AMS Press.)

1926 The Yukaghir and the Yukaghirized Tungus.

[1975] The Jesup North Pacific Expedition 9, Memoirs
of the American Museum of Natural History.
Leiden/New York. (Reprinted 1975. New York:
AMS Press.)

1926a The Ethnological Problems of Bering Sea. Amer¬
ican Museum Journal 26(l):90-95.

1928 Peoples of Asiatic Russia. New York: American
Museum of Natural History.

1933 History. Ethnology, and Anthropology of the
Aleut. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of
Washington.

Jonaitis. Aldona

1986 The Art of the Northern Tlingit. Seattle: Uni¬
versity of Washington Press.

Jones, Susan (Editor)

1982 Eskimo Dolls. Anchorage, Alaska: Alaska State
Council on the Arts.

1986 The Artists Behind the Work. Fairbanks, Alaska:
University of Alaska Museum.

Jordan, Richard H.. and Knecht, Richard A.

1986 Archaeological Research on Western Kodiak
Island, Alaska: The Development of Koniag
Culture, in Late Prehistoric Development of
Alaska's Native People, edited by Robert D.
Shaw; Roger K. Harritt; and Don E. Dumond.
Alaska Historical Commission Studies in History
190. Anchorage, pp. 356—453.

Kaplan, Susan A.; Jordan, Richard H.; and Sheehan, Glenn W.

1984 An Eskimo Whaling Outfit from Sledge Island,
Alaska. Expedition 26(2): 16-23.

Keithahn. Edward L.

1 963 Monuments in Cedar. New York: Bonanza Books.

Kendall, Laurel

1986 Berthold Laufer and the Amur River Collection
at the American Museum of Natural History.

356

Unpublished Ms. American Museum of Natural
History.

Khlebnikov, Kirill T.

1979 Russkaia America v neopublikovannykh zapis-

kakhakh Khlebnikova [Russian America in
Khlebnikov's unpublished manuscripts], edited
and annotated by R. G. Liapunova and S. G.
Fedorova. Leningrad: Nauka.

1985 Novo- Arkhangelsk [Novo-Arkhangelsk], edited

and annotated by S. G. Fedorova. Moscow:
Nauka.

King, Jonathan C. H.

1981a Artificial Curiosities from the Northwest Coast
of America. London: British Museum Publica¬
tions, Ltd.

1981b Eighteenth Century Pacific Collections in the
British Museum. American Indian Art Magazine
6(2):32— 39.

Kleinfeld, Judith, et al.

1973 Land Claims and Native Manpower Staffing
Regional and Village Corporations under Alaska
Native Settlement Act of 1971. Anchorage.
Alaska: Alaska Native Foundation and Institute
of Social. Economic, and Government Research,
University of Alaska.

Kohout. Karen, and Kleinfeld, Judith

1974 Alaska Natives in Higher Education. Fairbanks,
Alaska: Institute of Social. Economic, and Gov¬
ernmental Research. University of Alaska.

Kos'ven, M. O.

1962 Iz istorii etnografii koriakov v XVIII v. [History
of the ethnography of the Koryak in the eigh¬
teenth century], Sibirskii Etnograficheskii Sbor-
nik4. Trudy Instituta Etnografii n.s. 74. Moscow:
ANSSSR. pp. 276-291.

Kotzebue. O. V.

1821 A Voyage of Discovery into the South Sea and
Beerings Straits, for the Purpose of Exploring a
North-East Passage. Undertaken in the Years
1815-1818 . . . London: Longman. Hurst, Reese.
Orme, and Brown.

Krader, Lawrence

1968 Bogoraz, Vladimir G.; Sternberg, Lev Y.; and
Jochelson. Vladimir. International Encyclopedia
of the Social Sciences 2:116—119. New York:
Free Press.

Krasheninnikov, Stepan P.

1755 Opisanie Zemli Kamchatki. St. Petersburg.

1 972 Exploration of Kamchatka. Portland: Oregon His¬

torical Society. (Translated with introduction
and notes by E. A. P. Crownhart-Vaughan from
Opisanie Zemli Kamchatki. 1755.)

Krauss. Michael E.

1983 Survival or Extinction for Alaska Native Lan¬
guages. Alaska Native News. February. An¬
chorage, Alaska.

Krushanov. A. I. (Editor)

1987 Istoria i kul'tura chukchei [Chukchi history and
culture], Leningrad: Nauka.

Lantis. Margaret

1938 The Alaska Whale Cult and Its Affinities. Amer¬
ican Anthropologist n.s. 40:438-464.

1947 Alaskan Eskimo Ceremonialism. Monographs of
the American Ethnological Society. (New York)
11. New York: J. J. Augustin.

1954 Edward William Nelson. Anthropological Papers
of the University of Alaska 3(1 ) : 4 — 1 6 . Fairbanks.

1970 The Aleut Social System, 1750 to 1810, from
Early Historical Sources. Ethnohistory in South¬
western Alaska and the Southern Yukon, edited
by M. Lantis. The University Press of Kentucky,
pp. 139-302.

1984a Nunivak Eskimo. Handbook of North American
Indians 5 (Arctic). Washington. D C.: Smithson¬
ian Institution, pp. 209-223.

1984b Aleut. Handbook of North American Indians 5
(Arctic). Washington. D.C.: Smithsonian Insti¬
tution. pp. 161-184.

Larsen, Dinah, and Dickey, Terry

1 982 Setting It Free: An Exhibition of Modern Alaska
Eskimo Ivory Carving. Fairbanks, Alaska: Uni¬
versity of Alaska Museum.

Larsen, Helge E.. and Rainey, Froelich G.

1948 Ipiutak and the Arctic Whale Hunting Culture.
Anthropological Papers of the American Mu¬
seum of Natural History. 42. New York.

Laufer, Berthold

1902 The Decorative Art of the Amur Tribes. The

[1975] Jesup North Pacific Expedition 4, Memoirs of

the American Museum of Natural History. Lei¬
den/New York. (Reprinted 1975, New York: AMS
Press).

Laughlin, William S.

1951 The Alaska Gateway Viewed from the Aleutian
Islands. The Physical Anthropology of the Amer¬
ican Indian. New York: Viking Fund. pp. 98-
126.

1967 Human Migration and Permanent Occupation in
the Bering Sea Area. The Bering Land Bridge.
edited by David M. Hopkins. Stanford: Stanford
University Press, pp. 409-450.

1980 Aleuts: Survivors of the Bering Land Bridge.
New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Wilson.

Laughlin, W. S.. and Reeder. G. (Editors)

1966 Studies in Aleutian-Kodiak Prehistory. Ecology,
and Anthropology. Arctic Anthropology 3(2).

Lee, Molly

1981 Pacific Eskimo Spruce Root Baskets. American
Indian Art Magazine 6(2):66— 73.

1983 Baleen Basketry of the North Alaska Eskimo.

Barrow, Alaska: North Slope Borough Planning
Department.

Lee, Molly, and Graburn, Nelson H. H.

1986 Commerce and Curios. Berkeley: Lowie Museum
of Anthropology.

Leont'ev, V. V.

1 983 Etnograhia i folklor kerekov [Kerek ethnography
and folklore], Moscow.

Leroi-Gourhan, Andre

1946 Archeologie du Pacifique-Nord. Materiaux pour
l'etude des Relations entre les Peuples Riverains
d'Asie et d'Amerique. Travaux et Memoires de
Tlnstitut d'Ethnologie 42. Paris: Institut d'Eth-
nologie.

Levin, M. G.

1958 Etnicheskaia antropologiia i problemy etnoge-

neza narodov Dal'nego Vostoka [Ethnic anthro¬
pology and problems of ethnogenesis of the
peoples of the Far East], Moscow.
Anthropological Types of the Northeastern Pa-
leoasiatics and Problems of Ethnogenesis. Pro¬
ceedings of the 32nd Congress of Americanists.
pp. 607-616.

Levin, M. G., and Potapov, L. P.

1961 Istoriko-etnograficheskii atlas Sibiri [Historico-

ethnographic atlas of Siberia], Moscow-Lenin-
grad: ANSSSR.

1964 The Peoples of Siberia. Stephen Dunn, transla¬
tion editor. Chicago and London: University of
Chicago Press (Orig. Publ. Narody Sibiri. 1956,
Moscow: ANSSSR.)

Levi-Strauss, Claude

1943 The Art of the Northwest Coast at the American
Museum of Natural History. Gazette des Beaux-
Arts pp. 175-182.

Liapunova, Roza Gavrilovna

1975 Ocherki po etnografii Aleutov: konets XVIII-
pervaia polovina XIX v. [Essay on the ethnog¬
raphy of the Aleut. Late eighteenth to mid¬
nineteenth centuries], Leningrad: Institut Et¬
nografii, ANSSSR.

Lipshits. B. A.

1955 O kollektsiiakh Muzeia antropologii i etnografii
. . . na Alaske i v Kalifornii (On the collections
in the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnogra¬
phy . . . from Alaska and California], Sbornik
Muzeia Antropologii i Etnografii 16:358-69.
Leningrad: ANSSSR.

Lisiansky, Urey (Lisianskii. Iurii)

1814 A Voyage Round the World in the Years 1802.

[1968] 4. 5. and 6 . . . in the Ship "Neva". London.

(Reprinted in Bibliotheca Australiana No. 42,
1968, Amsterdam/New York.)

Lomonosov, M.

1763 Kratkoe opisanie raznyky puteshestvii po sev-

[1952] ernym moriam i pokazanie vozmozhnogo pro-
khodu sibirskim okeanom [Short Description of
several travels on the northern seas and dem¬
onstration of the possibility of a passage to the
Siberian Ocean], (Reprinted in Vol. 6 of Com¬
plete Works, 1952, Moscow: Nauka.)

Lopatin. Ivan A.

1922 Gol'dy amurskie, ussuriiskie i sungariiskie. Zap-
iski Obshchestva izucheniia Amurskogo kraia
Vladivostokskogo otdeleniia Priamurskogo Ot-
dela Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva
T. 1 7 [The Gold of the Amur, Ussuri, and Sungari
in Documents of the Society for the study of
the Amur region, Vladivostok bureau of the
Amur branch of the Russian Geographic Society.
Vol. 17], Vladivostok.

1925 Orochi — sorodichi Man'chzhur [Oroch: Kinsmen

of the Manchu], Vestnik Manzhurii 8-10. Khar-
bin.

Low, Jean

1977 George Thornton Emmons. Alaska Journal 7( 1 ):
2-11

Lundy, Doris

1983 Styles of Coastal Rock Art. Indian Art Traditions
of the Northwest Coast, edited by Roy Carlson.
Burnaby. British Columbia: Simon Frazer Uni¬
versity. pp. 89-97.

Lutke, Frederic (Litke. Fedor Petrovich)

1835-36 Voyage autour du Monde 1826-1829. Paris:

[1971] Didot Freres. (Reprinted 1971, Bibliotheca Aus¬
traliana no. 62. Amsterdam: N. Israel; New York:
Da Capo Press.)

MacDonald, George

1 983 Prehistoric Art of the Northern Northwest Coast.

Indian Art Traditions of the Northwest Coast.
edited by Roy L. Carlson. Burnaby, British Co¬
lumbia: Simon Frazer University, pp. 99-121.

Majors. H. M.

1 983 Early Russian Knowledge of Alaska, 1701—1 730.

Northwest Discovery 4:84—152.

Mather. Elsie

1985 Cauyarnariuq. Bethel, Alaska: Lower Kuskok-

wim School District Bilingual-Bicultural Depart¬
ment.

Meletinskii, E. M.

1963 Proiskhozhdenie geroicheskogo eposa [Origins
of the heroic epic]. Moscow.

1979 Paleoasiatskii mifologicheskii epos (Paleoasiatic
mythological epic], Moscow.

Menovshchikov, G. A.

1964 The Eskimos. The Peoples of Siberia, edited by
M. G. Levin and L. P. Potapov. (Orig. publ.
1956). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp.
836-850.

1987 Materialy i issledovaniia po iazyku i fol'kloru
naukanskikh eskimosov [Data and research on
the language and folklore of the Naukansky
Eskimo], Leningrad: Nauka/ANSSSR.

Merck, C. H.

1978 (see Titova)

1 980 Siberia and Northwestern America 1 788-1 792:
The Journal of Carl Heinrich Merck . . . Kingston.
Ontario: Limestone Press.

Michael, Henry, and James W, VanStone, editors

1983 Cultures of the Bering Sea Region: Papers from
an International Symposium. International Re¬
search and Exchanges Board. New York.

Miller, Polly

1967 Lost Heritage of Alaska. Cleveland/New York:
World Publishing Company.

Moberg, Carl-Axel

1960 On Some Circumpolar and Arctic Problems. Acta
Arctica 12:67-74.

Mochanov. Iurii A.

1969 The Ymyiakhtakh Late Neolithic Culture, trans¬
lated by R. Powers. Arctic Anthropology 6(1) 115—
118.

Moore, Riley D.

1923 Social Life of the Eskimo of St. Lawrence Island.
American Anthropologist 25(31:339—375.

Morrow, Phyllis

1984 It Is Time for Drumming: A Summary of Recent
Research on Yup'ik Ceremonialism. Etudes/In-
uit/Studies 8 (Special Issue):l 13-140.

Murdoch, John

1892 Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expe-

[1988] dition. 9th Annual Report of the Bureau of
American Ethnology for the Years 1887—1888.
Washington, D.C. (Reprinted with introduction
by William W. Fitzhugh. Classics of Smithsonian
Anthropology Series. 1988. Washington, D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution Press).

Nagishkin, Dmitrii

1 980 Folktales of the Amur: Stories from the Russian
Far East. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc./
Leningrad: Aurora Art Publisher.

Nelson, Edward William

1882 A Sledge Journey in the Delta of the Yukon.

Northern Alaska. Proceedings of the Royal Geo¬
graphical Society and Monthly Record of Ge¬
ography. n.s. 4:660—670.

1887 Report upon Natural History Made in Alaska
between the Years 1887-1881. Washington.
D.C.: Arctic Series of Publications. U.S. Army
Signal Service, III.

1899 The Eskimo about Bering Strait. Bureau of Amer-

[1983] ican Ethnology Annual Report 18:1-518. Wash¬
ington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. (Reprinted
with introduction by William W. Fitzhugh, Clas¬
sics of Smithsonian Anthropology Series. 1983.
Washington. D C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.)

357

Niblack, Ensign Albert P.

1890 The Coast Indians of Southern Alaska and North¬
ern British Columbia, pp. 225-386. U.S. National
Museum Annual Report for 1888.

Nordenskiold, Adolf E. F. von

1 882 The Voyage of the Vega Round Asia and Europe,
with a Historical Review of Previous Journeys
along the North Coast of the Old World. New
York : Macmillan and Co. (Translated by Alex¬
ander Leslie.)

1883 Studier och forskningar foranledda af mina resor
1 hoga Norden. Ett populart vetenskapligt bihang
till "Vega fard kuing Asien och Europa". Stock¬
holm: F. & G. Beijer.

1885 Studien und Forschungen veranlasst durch meine
Reisen im hohen Norden. Ein popular-wissen-
schaftliches Supplement zu die Umsegelung
Asiens und Europas auf der Vega. Leipzig: F.
A. Brockhuas.

Nuligak

1966 Nuligak. Toronto: P. Martin Associates.

Nute. Grace Lee

1943 Kennicott in the North. The Beaver Outfit 274
(September):28-32.

O'Brien, Irma

1986 Sam Fox: The Life and Art of a Yup'ik Eskimo.
Dillingham, Alaska: Samuel K. Fox Museum.

Okladnikov, A.

1981 Ancient Art of the Amur Region. (Also entitled:

Art of the Amur. Ancient Art of the Russian Far
East.) Leningrad: Aurora.

Okladnikova, E. A.

1987 Science Education in Russian America. In: Rus¬
sia's American Colony, edited by S. Frederick
Starr, pp. 218—248. Raleigh: Duke University
Press.

Olson, R. L.

1936 The Quinault Indians. University of Washington
Publications in Anthropology 6(1).

Oquilluk, W. A.

1973 People of Kauwerak: Legends of the Northern
Eskimo. Anchorage. Alaska: Alaska Methodist
University.

Orlova, N. S. (Compiler)

1951 Otkrytiia russkikh zemleprokhodtsev i poliar-
nykh morekhodov XVII veka na severo-vostoke
Azii. Sbornik dokumentov [Discoveries of the
Russian explorations and polar navigations in
northeastern Asia in the seventeenth century.
Collection of documents], Moscow.

Pierce, Richard A.

1975 Voznesenskii: Scientist in Alaska. Alaska Jour¬
nal 5(1 ): 1 1—15.

Pinart, Alphonse L.

1875 La caverne d'Aknahh, lie d'Ounga (Archipel
Shumagin. Aliaska). Paris: E. Leroux.

Popova, U. G.

1981 Eveny Magadanskoi oblasti: ocherki istorii i
kul'tury evenov Okhotskogo poberezh'ia 191 7—
1977 gg [The Magadan District Even; sketch of
the history and culture of the Okhotsk Sea coast
Even, 1917—1977], Moscow: Nauka.

Price, T. Douglas, and Brown, James A. (Editors)

1985 Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers: The Emergence
of Cultural Complexity. Orlando, Florida: Aca¬
demic Press.

Prokofeva, E. D.

1971 Shamanskie kostiumy narodov Sibiri. [Shaman-
istic costumes of the peoples of Siberia] Sbornik
Muzeia Antropologii i Etnografii 27:5-100. Len¬
ingrad: ANSSSR.

Prytkova, N. F.

1976 Odezhda chukchei, koriakov i itel'menov. Ma-
terial'naia kul'tura narodov Sibiri i severa.
[Chukchi, Koryak, and Itelmen clothing, in The
material culture of the peoples of Siberia and
the North], Leningrad: Nauka. pp. 5-88.

Quimby. George I.

1985 Japanese Wrecks, Iron Tools, and Prehistoric
Indians of the Northwest Coast. Arctic Anthro¬
pology 22(2):7— 15.

Rasmussen, K. J. V.

1927 Across Arctic America: Narrative of the Fifth
Thule Expedition. New York: G. P. Putnam's
Sons.

1931 The Netsilik Eskimos: Social Life and Spiritual
Culture. Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition
1921—24 8(1—2). Copenhagen.

Ray, Charles K.

1958 A Program of Education for Alaska Natives.
Fairbanks, Alaska: University of Alaska.

Ray. Dorothy Jean

n.d. Graphic Arts of the Alaska Eskimo. Native Amer¬

ican Arts 2. Indian Crafts Board, U.S. Depart¬
ment of the Interior.

1961 Artists of the Tundra and the Sea. Seattle:
University of Washington Press.

1 964 Nineteenth Century Settlement and Subsistence
Patterns in the Bering Strait. Arctic Anthropol¬
ogy 2:61-94.

1967a Land Tenure and Polity of the Bering Strait
Eskimos. Journal of the West 6:371—394.

1967b Alaskan Eskimo Arts and Crafts. The Beaver
(Autumn):80— 91 .

1974 The Billiken. The Alaska Journal 4(1 ):25— 31 .

1975 The Eskimo of the Bering Strait. 1650—1898.
Seattle/London: University of Washington Press.

1977 Eskimo Art: Tradition and Innovation in North
Alaska. Seattle/London: University of Washing¬
ton Press.

1981 Aleut and Eskimo Art. Tradition and Innovation
in South Alaska. London: C. Hurst & Company.

1984 Bering Strait Eskimo. Handbook of North Amer¬
ican Indians 5 (Arctic). Washington, D.C.: Smith¬
sonian Institution, pp. 285-302.

Ray. Dorothy Jean, and Blaker, Alfred A.

1967 Eskimo Masks: Art and Ceremony. Seattle/Lon¬
don: University of Washington Press.

Ray. Patrick Henry

1885 Ethnographic Sketch of the Natives of Point
Barrow. U.S. Signal Service Report of the Inter¬
national Polar Expedition to Point Barrow. Alaska.
Washington, D C.: U.S. Government Printing
Office.

Razumovskaia, R. S.

1967 Pletenye izdeliia severo-zapadnykh indeitsev.

[Woven objects of the Northwest Coast Indians],
Sbornik Muzeia Antropologii i Etnografii 24:93-
123. Leningrad: ANSSSR.

Rivet, Paul

1943 Les Origines de l'Homme Americain. Montreal,
Quebec: Les Editions de l'Arbre.

Robert-Lamblin. Joelle

1980 Le Kayak Aleoute — Vu Par Son Constructeur et
Utilisateur — et la Chasse a la Loutre de Mer.
Objets et Mondes 20(l):5-20.

Rohner, Ronald P. (Editor)

1969 The Ethnography of Franz Boas. Chicago: Uni¬
versity of Chicago Press.

Sapir, Edward

1915 The Na-Dene Languages: A Preliminary Report.
American Anthropologist 17:534—558.

1916 Time Perspective in Aboriginal American Cul¬
ture: A Study in Method. Canada Department
of Mines. Geological Survey Memoir 90, An¬
thropological Series 13. Ottawa.

Sarychev, G. A.

1806—07 Account of a Voyage of Discovery to the North¬
east of Siberia, the Frozen Ocean and the North¬
east Sea. London: Richard Phillips.

Sauer. M.

1802 An Account of a Geographical and Astronomical

Expedition to the Northern Parts of Russia . . .
in the Years 1 785. etc. to 1 794. London: T.
Cadell.

Scammon, Charles M.

1874 The Marine Mammals of the North-Western
Coast of North America. San Francisco: John H.
Carmony and Co.

Schurtz, H.

1 896 Zur Ornamentik der Aino. Internationales Archiv
fur Ethnography 9:233—251.

Schuster, Carl

1951a A Survival of the Eurasiatic Animal Style in
Modern Alaskan Eskimo Art. Selected Papers of
the 29th Congress of Americanists, edited by
Sol Tax. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
pp. 35—45.

1951b Joint Marks: A Possible Index of Cultural Contact

between America, Oceania, and the Far East.
Royal Tropical Institute 39:4—51. Amsterdam.

Shapsnikoff, Anfesia T., and Hudson, Raymond

1974 Aleut Basketry. Anthropological Papers of the
University of Alaska 16(2):41— 61.

Sherwood, Morgan

1965 Exploration of Alaska. 1865—1900. New Haven:
Yale University Press.

Shirokogoroff, S. M.

1929 Social Organization of the Northern Tungus.
Shanghai, China: Commercial Press, Ltd.

1935 Psychomental Complex of the Tungus. London:
Kegan et al.

Shotridge, Louis, and Shotridge, Florence

1913 Indians of the Northwest. The Museum Journal
4(3). Philadelphia: University Museum.

Shrenk, L. I. (Schrenk)

1883- Ob Inorodtsakh Amurskogo Kraia [The natives

1903 of the Amur region] Vol. 1 1883, Vol. 2 1899,
Vol. 3 1903. St. Petersburg. (Translated from
Reisen und Forschungen im Amur-Lande. 3 vols.
1881-1892.)

Shternberg, Lev la. (Sternberg)

1930 Giliaki, Orochi. Gol'dy. Negidal'tsy, Ainy [The
Gilyak, Oroch, Gold, Negidal, and Ainu], Kha¬
barovsk.

1931 Ornament iz olen'ego volosa i igl dikobraza
[Reindeer hair and porcupine quill ornamenta¬
tion], Sovetskaia Etnografiia (3 — 4): 1 03 — 1 2 1 .

Shur, L. A., and Pierce, R. A.

1976 Artists in Russian America: Mikhail Tikhanov
(1818). The Alaska Journal 6(l):40-49.

1978 Pavel Mikhailov. Artist in Russian America. The
Alaska Journal 8(4):360— 363.

Siebert, Erna V.

1980 Northern Athapaskan Collections of the First
Half of the Nineteenth Century. Arctic Anthro¬
pology 1 7(1 ):49— 76.

Smithsonian Institution

Annual Reports of the Smithsonian Institution.
Washington, D.C.

Smoliak, A. V.

1966 Ul’chi: khoziaistvo i byt v proshlom i nastoiash-
chem [The UP chi: Economy and way of life in
the past and present]. Moscow: Nauka.

Spencer. Robert F.

1959 The North Alaskan Eskimo: A Study in Ecology
and Society. Washington. D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution.

Stanyukovich. T. V.

1970 The Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography

Named After Peter the Great. Leningrad: Nauka/
ANSSSR.

Starr. S. Frederick (Editor)

1987 Russia's American Colony. Durham, North Car¬
olina: Duke University Press.

Steinbright, Jan (Editor)

1985 Interwoven Expressions: Works by Contempo¬
rary Alaska Native Basketmakers. Fairbanks.
Alaska: Institute for Alaska Native Arts.

1986 Alaskameut '86: An Exhibit of Contemporary
Alaska Native Masks. Fairbanks, Alaska: Insti¬
tute for Alaska Native Arts.

Stejneger, Leonhard H.

n.d. Ms, report on 1882-83 expedition. Smithsonian
Institution Archives.

1936 Georg Wilhelm Steller: The Pioneer of Alaskan
Natural History. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press.

Sternberg (see Shternberg)

Stewart, T. D.

1973 The People of America. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons.

Stoney, George M.

1890 Naval Explorations in Alaska: An Account of
Two Naval Expeditions to Northern Alaska, with
Official Maps of the Country Explored. Annap¬
olis: U.S. Naval Institute.

Swadesh, Morris

1 962 Linguistic Relations across Bering Strait. Amer¬
ican Anthropologist 64:1262-1291.

Swan, James G.

1869 The Indians of Cape Flattery at the Entrance to
the Strait of Fuca, Washington Territory. Smith¬
sonian Contributions to Knowledge 16. Wash¬
ington. D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.

Swanton, John R.

1908 Social Condition, Beliefs, and Linguistic Rela¬
tionship of the Tlingit Indians. Annual Report.
Bureau of American Ethnology, 1904-1905
26:391-485.

Szathmary. Emoke J. E.

1 984 Human Biology of the Arctic. Handbook of North
American Indians 5 (Arctic). Washington. D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution.

Szathmary. E. J. E.. and Ossenberg, N. S.

1978 Are the Biological Differences between North
American Indians Truly Profound? Current An¬
thropology 19:673—701.

Tennant. Edward A., and Bitar, Joseph N. (Editors)

1981 Yupik Lore: Oral Traditions of an Eskimo People.
Bethel, Alaska: Lower Kuskokwim School Dis¬
trict.

Thalbitzer, William

1908 The Heathen Priests of East Greenland. Verhand

Lungen des XVI Amerekanisten-Kongresses.
Wien 1908. pp. 447-464.

Titova, Z. D. (Compiler)

1978 Etnograficheskie materialy severo-vostochnoi

358

geograficheskoi ekspeditsii 1785—1795 [Ethno¬
graphic material of the north-eastern geographic
expedition of 1785—1798). Magadan.

Townsend, Joan B.

1980 Ranked Societies of the Alaskan Pacific Rim. in
Alaska Native Culture and History. Senri Eth¬
nological Studies 4:123—156. Osaka: National
Museum of Ethnology.

Turner, Christy G., II

1985 The Dental Search for Native American Origins.

Out of Asia: Peopling the Americas and the
Pacific, edited by Robert Kirk and Emoke Szath-
mary. Canberra: Australian National University,
pp. 31-78.

Turner. Christy G. II: Aigner, Jean S.; and Richard, Linda R.
1974 Chaluka Stratigraphy, Umnak Island. Alaska.

Arctic Anthropology 1 1 (Supplement): 125-1 42.
Turner. Geoffrey

1976 Hair Embroidery in Siberia and North America.

Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, Oc¬
casional Papers on Technology 7.

Turner, Lucien

1894 Ethnology of the Ungava District, Hudson Bay
Territory. Edited by John Murdoch. 1 1th Annual
Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology.
Washington, D.C. pp. 159—350.

U.S. Congress

1868 Russian America. House of Representatives.

Executive Document 177. Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office.

U.S. Department of the Interior, Indian Arts and Crafts
Board.

1966 Alaska. Smoke Signals. 50/51 (Fall-Winter).
Usugan, Frances

1984 Interview. July 20. Toksook Bay, Nelson Island,
Alaska. 14(h)(1) Site Survey. Anchorage, Alaska:
Bureau of Indian Affairs Realty Office.

VanStone, J. W.

1983 Protective Hide Body Armor of the Historic
Chukchi and Siberian Eskimos. Etudes/lnuit/
Studies 7:3-24.

Vasil'evskii, R. S.

1969 The Origin of the Ancient Koryak Culture on
the Northern Okhotsk Coast. Arctic Anthropol¬
ogy 6(1 ): 1 50—164.

1971 Proiskhozhdenie i drevniaia kul'tura koriakov
[Origin and ancient culture of the Koryak],
Novosibirsk: ANSSSR/Nauka.

Vaughan. Thomas, and Holm. Bill

1982 Soft Gold, the Fur Trade and Cultural Exchange
on the Northwest Coast of America. Portland:
Oregon Historical Society.

Vaughan. Thomas: Crownhart-Vaughan, E. A. P.; and Palau

de Iglesias. Mercedes

1977 Voyages of Enlightenment: Malaspina on the
Northwest Coast, 1 791/1 792. Portland, Oregon:
Oregon Historical Society.

Vdovin, I. S.

1961 Eskimosskie elementy v kul'ture chukchei i ko¬
riakov [Eskimo elements in the Chukchi and
Koryak cultures). Sibirskii Etnograficheskii Sbor-
nik 3. Trudy Instituta Etnografii 64. Moscow:
ANSSSR. pp. 27-63.

1973 Ocherki etnicheskoi istorii koriakov [Ethno-his-
tory of the Koryak). Leningrad.

Veniaminov, Ivan

1984 Notes on the Islands of the Unalashka District.
Edited by R. Pierce. Kingston, Ontario: Lime¬
stone Press. (Translated by Lydia T. Black and
R. H. Geoghegan from Zapiski ob ostrovakh
Unalashkinskago otdela. St. Petersburg. 1840.)

Wardwell. Allen

1 978 Objects of Bright Pride: Northwest Coast Indian
Art from the American Museum of Natural
History. New York: Center for Inter-American
Relations and American Federation of Arts.

Wauchope, Robert

1962 Lost Tribes and Sunken Continents. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.

Weber. Michael

1976 Artifacts from the Northwest Coast. El Palacio:

Quarterly Journal of the Museum of New Mexico
82(4):4— 18.

West, Frederick Hadleigh

1981 The Archaeology of Beringia. New York: Colum¬

bia University Press.

Weyer, Edward Moffat, Jr.

1929 An Aleut Burial. Anthropological Papers of the
American Museum of Natural History 31:219—
238.

1932 The Eskimos. Their Environment and Folkways.

11962) New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. (Re¬
printed 1962, Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books.)

White, William C.

1945 Bone Culture of Ancient China. Museum Studies
4. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Woodbury, Anthony C.

1984 Eskimo and Aleut Languages. Handbook of North
American Indians 5 (Arctic). Washington, D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution.

Wrangell, F. P.

1980 Russian America: Statistical and Ethnographic
Information. Kingston. Ontario: Limestone Press.

Zagoskin, Lavrentii Alekseevich

1967 Lieutenant Zagoskin's Travels in Russian Amer¬
ica 1842-1844, edited by Henry N. Michael.
University of Toronto Press, for the Arctic In¬
stitute of North America. (Orig. Puteshestvie i
otkrytiia leitenanta L. Zagoskina v Russkoi Amer-
ike. Publ. 1847-48. reprinted under editorship
of M. B. Chernenko, 1956 Moscow.)

Zimmerly, David W.

1986 Qajaq: Kayaks of Siberia and Alaska. Juneau,
Alaska: Division of State Museums.

CREDITS

Original Maps and Drawings: Jo Ann Moore (except as noted below).
Russian manuscript translation and Russian literature research:
Valerie Chaussonnet
Photo credits:

Unless otherwise credited, all photographs of objects in this book
were taken by Smithsonian staff photographers under the direction
of Richard Hoffmeister: Eric Long, Laurie Minor, Dane A. Penland,
Richard Strauss, Jeff Tinsley, and Rick Vargas; additional contribution
by staff photographers Chip Clark and Victor Krantz.

Most ethnographic photographs in this book are from the photo
archives at the American Museum of Natural History (primarily from
the Jesup Expedition), and at the National Museum of Natural History,
Smithsonian Institution.

Other credits to individuals and organizations are listed below,
with figure or page numbers.

American Museum of Natural History, Photographic Department: fig.
149.

Academy of Sciences, Leningrad: figs. 63, 69, 84, 96, 188, 191, 193,
377, 384, 437.

Aurora Press, Leningrad: figs. 49. 80.

James H. Barker: p. 2—3.

Bancroft Library, University of California-Berkeley: fig. 247.

Joel Breger: fig. 366.

British Columbia Provincial Museum, Victoria, George T. Emmons:
fig. 379.

Edmund Carpenter: fig. 2.

Denver Museum of Natural History, A. M. Bailey: p. 22—23, fig. 457.
William W. Fitzhugh: fig. 91.

Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Lomen Brothers: fig. 229; p. 143.

Grove National Historic Landmark, Glenview Park District, Illinois:
fig. 99.

Institute of Alaska Native Art: figs. 467, 474.

S. N. Ivanov: figs. 452, 453, 455.

Limestone Press: figs. 77, 78. 79, 92, 93, 309.

Robert E. Mates: fig. 2.

Michigan State University Archives and Historical Collections, Charles
C. Hughes: fig. 297.

Museo de America, Madrid: fig. 282.

NASA — Goddard Spaceflight Center: fig. 173.

National Museum of Denmark, Department of Ethnography. Leo
Hansen: fig. 305.

National Park Service, Robert Belous: fig. 456.

Novosti from Sovfoto, R. Zviagel'skii: p. 313; fig 454.

Peabody Museum. Harvard University: fig. 16.

Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, England: fig. 443.

Ken Pratt: fig. 123.

Nicholas Rokitiansky (Collection), photo courtesy of John Blair: p. 69.
Royal Library, Stockholm: fig. 72.

Andres Slapinsh: figs. 174, 331.

Christie G. Turner II: fig. 124.

University Museum, University of Pennsylvania. William B Van Valin:
fig. 212.

University of Alaska Museum: fig. 465.

University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Division: fig.
55.

Dan Wheeler: fig. 462.

Special thanks are due to the following:

Alaska Geological Society (Hamilton et al. 1986): fig. 121.

Alaska International Art Institute (Davis and Davis, 1974: fig 16);
fig. 448.

American Museum of Natural History, Anthropological Papers (Larsen
and Rainey 1948): fig. 147.

Lydia Black: fig. 458.

Paula Brizee, research: fig. 316.

Ernest S. Burch, Jr., illustration: fig. 303.

Donald Cavallieri, Gene Fieldman, and Per Gloersen (NASA — God¬
dard Spaceflight Center): fig. 173.

Christopher Donta, illustration: fig. 162.

Bill Holm, facsimiles: earrings, hairband, and nosepin fig. 67. drum
fig. 326; illustrations: figs. 388, 397, 400, 401, 403, 404, 407.
Inter-Nord (Dikov, 1972): fig. 153.

Alfred A. Knopf (Covarrubias 1954: fig. 18, 40): figs. 140. 451.
Michael Krauss, research: fig. 175.

Nauka press (Arutiunov and Sergeev, 1975): fig. 145.

Julie Perlmutter, illustration: figs. 139, 153, 458.

Royal Ontario Museum: fig. 450.

V. O. Shubin and N. N. Dikov (USSR Academy of Sciences. Siberian
Branch): fig. 134.

Jessica Sloane, research: figs. 247, 249, 251, 254, 256, 257, 258,
262.

Dennis Stanford, Smithsonian Institution, facsimile: fig. 122.
University of Washington Press (Dauenhauer and Dauenhauer 1987):
p. 69.

359

Acknowledgments

Crossroads of Continents has been an enormous
undertaking. Since its inception in 1977, scores of
institutions and hundreds of individuals have been
swept into its vortex, which deepens and widens with
every passing day. Nevertheless, the time has thank¬
fully come to call a halt and repay debts, which are
really too substantial to be squared fairly in these
few lines. Note, however, that many credits will be
found in the captions, credit lists, and appendices.

Our first acknowledgment is to the peoples of the
North Pacific and Bering Sea region whose genius
created the remarkable materials illustrated in this
book and exhibition; to those who collected these
materials; and to the museum curators in whose care
they have been entrusted for so many years. The fact
that the most important Siberian collections reside in
New York and the most important Alaskan collections
reside in Moscow and Leningrad emphasizes the
reciprocal interests in conservation of these and other
collections.

Crossroads was conceived in 1977 in discussions
between Iu. V. Bromlei, Director of the Institute of
Ethnography of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and
William W. Fitzhugh and William C. Sturtevant of the
Smithsonian Institution. While the operational aspects
of the project have been managed respectively on
each side by the institute and the Smithsonian, general
sponsorship involving scholarly exchanges has been
by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS)
and its operational arm, the International Research
and Exchanges Board (IREX). Stanley Katz (ACLS).
and Allen Kassof, Wesley Fisher. Arlen Hastings, and
Karen Kiesel of IREX have been invaluable in this
intermediary role. Also deserving special thanks are
staffs of the American and Soviet embassies in Wash¬
ington and Moscow, and the USIA and the Department
of State staff, especially Tom Simons.

On the Soviet side, the project was managed by
the Institute of Ethnography under the direction of
Iu.V. Bromlei, assisted by L.P. Kuzmina and V.A.
Tishkov. Scientific direction of the Soviet curatorial
team was provided by S.A Arutiunov. assisted by
S.Ia. Serov. Support for exhibition aspects within the
Academy came from the Council on Exhibitions,
headed by A.P. Kapitsa, assisted by M. Martianova.
We are especially indebted, however, to the Museum
of Anthropology and Ethnography, a branch of the
Institute of Ethnography in Leningrad, directed by
R.F. Its, assisted by E.G. Fedorova and I D. Vasil'eva.
This revered institution contributed virtually all of the
Soviet-owned objects in the exhibition with the ex¬
ception of a small group of Siberian Paleolithic artifacts
loaned by the Sakhalin Regional Museum, directed
by V.O. Shubin. Other Soviet institutions contributing
illustrative materials included the Academy of Arts
in Leningrad (courtesy of L.S. Poliakova and D. Safor-
Alieva), Museum of History and Culture of the Peoples
of Siberia and the Far East in Novosibirsk, the I.W.
Repin Institute of Leningrad, and the State Russian
Museum in Leningrad (courtesy of E.M. Petrova and
L.P. Rybakova). Thanks are also due to Vladmir Gusev
of Aurora Press.

Crossroads has, from its inception, been based on
the principle of Soviet-American reciprocity. This
principle has governed curatorial exchanges, selection
of objects, and even exhibition venues. Thus, when
Crossroads completes its tour of North America in
1992, it will begin a Soviet tour under joint auspices
of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and the Ministry
of Culture. It is with great pleasure that we note the
Ministry's collaboration. On the American side, the
exhibition has been supported by a wide group of
museums, institutions, and individuals. Among the

many cooperating institutions (noted in individual
credits for loans and illustrations), one organization
stands out: the American Museum of Natural History.
Without its collections of early Siberian ethnography
and the generous assistance of its staff, Barbara
Conklin, Stanley Freed, Laurel Kendall, David Hurst
Thomas, Anibal Rodriguez, Belinda Kaye, Judith Lev¬
inson, and Bill Weinstein. Crossroads would have
been still-born.

The third major body of material in this exhibition
and book comes from the Smithsonian's Department
of Anthropology and its subunits, the National An¬
thropological Archives. Processing and Conservation
Laboratories, Human Studies Film Archive, and Hand¬
book of North American Indians. As part of the
Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History/Museum of
Man, we have received strong support for over ten
years from directors Richard Fiske, Stanwyn Shelter,
James Tyler and Robert Hoffmann, all of whom have
contributed important administrative, financial, and
moral support, as have two anthropology Department
Chairs, Douglas Ubelaker and Adrienne Kaeppler.
Within the National Musuem of Natural History, spe¬
cial thanks are due to the Office of Special Exhibits,
directed by Sheila Mutchler, assisted by Marjory
Stoller, Constance Lee. Pat Douglas, Cissy Anklam.
This exhibition and publication would not have been
possible without their tireless efforts at coordinating
research, design, and production. Advertising and
publicity were expertly handled by Vicky Moeser and
the Office of Public Affairs. The task of artifact
conservation fell to Michelle Austin, Gabrielle Browne,
Edith Dietze, Vera Espinola, Sonja Fogle, Natalie
Firnhaber, Greta Hansen. Ingrid Neuman, and Cath¬
erine Valentour. Artifact photography was done under
the direction of Richard Hofmeister by Harold E.
Dougherty, Eric Long, Laurie Minor, Dane Penland,
Richard Strauss. Jeff Tinsley, and Rick Vargas, and
by Chip Clark and Victor Krantz. Our fine manikins
were designed by Barbara Charles based upon re¬
search by Aron Crowell and Valerie Chaussonnet,
sculpted by Frances H. Moore, and fabricated and
dressed by Virginia Heaven. Casting volunteers in¬
cluded JoAllyn Archambault, Mitchell L. Bush, Jr.,
Monica Carver, Aron Crowell, Frank Ducheneaux,
Natalie Firnhaber, Francis Harjoe. Robert Holden, and
Kebin Nephew, Exhibition planning and design has
been by Barbara Charles, Jeff Jones, and Bob Staples
of Staples and Charles, Ltd. Sanders Design did the
bracket and installation work.

Most of our fine illustrations are the work of Jo Ann
Moore, with some contributions by Julie Perlmutter.
Veteran Inua book designers Alex and Caroline Castro
performed miracles in fitting Crossroads attractively
into too few pages, edited by Jeanne Sexton and
Lorraine Atherton. Alex Castro was also the artistic
director for catalog photography. Publication has been
managed by Kathleen Brown, with project direction
by Daniel Goodwin and Felix Lowe of Smithsonian
Press. Among those contributing research information
were Robert Ackerman, Phil Angle, Marjorie Balzer,
Lydia Black, Edmund Carpenter, Richard and Nora
Dauenhauer, James E. Dixon, Bernadette Driscoll,
Don E. Dumond, Kate Duncan, Vera Espinola, Charles
Handley, Richard H. Jordan, Richard A. Knecht, Oleg
Kobtzeff. Roxie Laybourne, Molly Lee, Michael Ostro-
gorsky, Richard Pierce, Roger Powers, Susan Rowley,
Dwight Schmidt, Dennis Stanford and staff of the
Canadian Museum of Civilization and its Archeological
Survey of Canada, coordinated by Sandra Gibb. The
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History's
Education Office staff, Laura Lou McKie, Debby Roth-
berg, and Caroline Sadler, provided assistance in

many ways, as did interns Paula Brizee, Christina
Burke, Tess Freidenburg, John Nissenbaum, Jessica
Sloan, Curtis Thrapp, Kimberly Wageman, Sonja Webb,
Alexia Bloch, and Audrey Porsche.

Crossroads has been assembled by a joint curatorial
team of Soviet, American, and Canadian anthropolo¬
gists. Project direction has been by William W. Fitz¬
hugh, assisted by Aron Crowell (Smithsonian). Ad¬
ditional curatorial team members for American cultures
included Bill Holm (Burke Museum, Seattle), who
wrote the Northwest Coast captions and fabricated
the shaman's drum (fig. 326) and various other props;
George MacDonald (Director, Canadian Museum of
Civilization, Ottawa); Jean-Loup Rousselot (Museum
fur Volkerkunde, Munich); William C. Sturtevant
(Smithsonian). James VanStone (Field Museum of
Natural History, Chicago). The Soviet curatorial team
worked under the direction of Sergei A. Arutiunov,
assisted by Sergei la. Serov, with contributions by
I.S. Gurvich, Igor Krupnik, and Vladimir Vasil'ev of
the Institute of Ethnography in Moscow, and G.I.
Dzeniskevich, Rosa G. Liapunova, Larisa Pavlinskaia,
and Sergei Poliakov of the Institute's Museum of
Anthropology and Ethnography in Leningrad. In ad¬
dition, we heartily thank our other volume contributors
and Alaska Native artists, listed in the table of contents
and in the final chapter. Except for Northwest Coast
portions, captions were written by Aron Crowell and
William W. Fitzhugh. Ted Timreck produced the
exhibition films, with special assistance from Rosita
Worl and Soviet filmmaker Andres Slapinsh, and other
filmmakers, especially Sarah Elder and Leonard Kam-
merling.

Crossroads of Continents received enthusiastic sup¬
port from Smithsonian officials ex-Secretary S. Dillon
Ripley and ex-Assistant Secretary for Museum Pro¬
grams, Paul Perrot. Later, their torches were passed
to different leaders, including Secretary Robert McC.
Adams, and Assistant Secretaries Thomas Freuden-
heim, Ralph Rinzler, and Robert Hoffmann. Crossroads
was funded by a major grant from the Smithsonian's
Special Exhibition Fund; but this in itself was not
sufficient without supplemental contributions from
museums cooperating in the North American tour
following the Washington opening, notably the Amer¬
ican Museum of Natural History, Indiana State Mu¬
seum. Anchorage Museum of History and Art, Ca¬
nadian Museum of Civilization, and two others, as yet
undecided. We thank Martha Cappelletti and the
Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition Service staff in ad¬
vance for management of the touring program. Pan
American Airlines has agreed to provide exhibition
shipment to and from the Soviet Union. We also thank
Gretchen Ellsworth, Lauren Grant, and Kennedy
Schmertz for their assistance in the "great protocol
effort,'' and Wilton Dillon, Carla Borden, and Cheryl
LaBerge for symposia coordination.

Finally we give special thanks to our collaborator
and friend for the past two difficult years, Valerie
Chaussonnet, for her methodical work as Russian
ethnographic literature researcher. Russian language
translator (assisted by Sergei Arutiunov, James Bern¬
hardt, and Muriel Joffre). bibliographer, illustrations
researcher, proof-reader, and volume contributor.

We would like to dedicate this volume to our
'widowed' wives. Dee Crowell and Lynne Fitzhugh,
for their support and forbearance. Quoth the Raven,
"Nevermore.''

360

m x^osutx m xc'vqskjx — m - — x^as^x m x^vosa^z ^ it

CO _ CO — CO — (/> _ CO

AN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI NVINOSHIIIMS S3iava9ll LIBRARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI NVIN0SH1IWS

2 co 2 CO 2 , CO _ 2 V CO 2 to

< .v s ,„nk < /xm^x s: < a s A s <

° w

£ v\Kn

2 > 2 > 5 XT’ 5 5 • W >

to • 2 CO 2 CO 2 to '•■“ 2 CO

ms S3iavaan libraries smithsonian institution NoiinuiSNi_NViNOSHiiiMS saiavaan libraries Smithsonian

to _ ~ to “ to _ -p, ■■» CO _ — (/)

2 _J Z _l 2

AN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI NVINOSHIIIMS S3iavaail LIBRARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOIlfUllSNI NVINOSH1IWS
z r- _ 2 _ r- _ _ _ z r~ 2 i“ :

ro /?' c

m ^ m ** xgu usgx m x?v oxx m xclicx — x'Qmsgx rn

to ± co*-. ± to _ CO 2 CO

ais ssiavaan libraries smithsonian institution NoiinuiSNi nvinoshiiims S3 i ava a ii li b rar i es smithsonian

Z ».• to 2 ,v to _ ^ _ ^

< ,vX\ 2 xsnx < .AS X < XcvasovTx

2 va- r: Wf M t

> N^piasgx 2 ^ ■*, 2

CO * 2 to *2 CO Z 1 0-2 c

INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI NVINOSHIIIMS S3iavaail LIBRARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI NVIN0SH1IWS

CO — CO ^ to 2 _ CO — . c

UJ ^ tu t/j /^*gx w Jo

xx;/ A* h ~ H

Q '\ _ O X^v p^x o XT' OX _ xi'-tll^x q

ms S3 1 a va a 11 librari e sz smithson ian-1 institution 2 NoiinuiSNi “nvinoshiiims 2s 3 lavaan^LiBRARi es2 smithsonian'

2 I- 2 Z , Z r- 2 r

O Xa?T7 i}X xTSoUnx O . m zToAXTX O X^VtitO/X m 2 2C^TlrcoX _ Xl)U xX O

St. -

00
X)

_ , cy xi

m x^vos'^x r; m ^ m ^ ''''^SsS^x m x^otnvy ^ r

CO £~ CO _ CO — CO _ c

AN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI NVINOSHIIIMS S3iava9ll LIBRARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI NVINOSHIIIMS

ims ssiavaan libraries smithsonian institution NoiinuiSNi nvinoshiiims saiavaan libraries smithsonian

AN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI NVINOSHIIIMS S3iava9ll LIBRARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI NVINOSHIIIMS
~ z r- 2 _ _ _

ims ssiavaan libraries smithsonian institution NoiinuiSNi nvinoshiiims saiavaan libraries smithsonian

* z

I I

xgx »x > 2

2 C/) 2 - ^ * 2 c n Z to

AN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI NVIN0SH1I/JS S3iavaail LIBRARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI NVIN0SH1IWS

CO — CO CO ZZ CO — c

— \>r

m w ^ m x^vosv'vx r; m

oo £ co £ co f: co

/nan libraries Smithsonian institution NouniiiSNi nvinoshiiws saiavaan libraries Smithsonian institut

Z , CO _ ^ 2 CO 2 W Z ■, W _ _ 2

< 2 X*^Tir<oX < 2 x life "S. 'a. ^ <

mT I t

2 • \j^y >' 2 X^osT^X >* 5 ‘'.V^ > 5

UTION '"NOlinillSNI NVINOSHIIWS^SS 1 dVd a n\l B RAR I ES^SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI-NVINOSHlIlMS^SS I dVd
5 \ f" ^77- 5 ^ 5 — ?. z '*

/yail LIBRARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOIlfUllSNI NVIN0SH1IWS S3ldVd8n LIBRARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUT

1 I I ra I ,m ^

t" ■/ '•'./ S'yiL -n /v/X* “jIK A t~ A\ -n .iOis^Xv > -n A- A> ’ t ■/ '•',/

.-/ _ vcoMas^oy _ Vc?ft«fcKpY 1- VlWjl 1 _ ^""^X I—

/ m Xo^dc^/ w '^40" m ^ xXuif^z m w '^niu^y m i; -4^^' m

co — co £ co \ £ co £ co

’UTION NOlinillSNI NVIN0SH1II/MS S3ldVdan LIBRARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI NVINOSHIIWS S3ldVd

CO 2 _ co 2 .»... CO 2 co 2 _ _ _ CO

U S < /«\ 2 < §* - 4a A s •-

Ss- n / * /* -r /A«TfkL\ -j . / 2 .'\NSfvv — i /oAr«ft.4wfiA -*-

<fe-

2 ^ > XOJili -g ^ s

* 2 CO 2 CO v Z cO k. 2 CO 2

i/dan libraries Smithsonian institution NouniiiSNi nvinoshiiws saidVdan libraries Smithsonian institut

co a; _ CO — co — CO

— i

O N£y< pC^x ~ O X'* dc.A^ ~ q " X^/iTTls^X O X^oC^/ “ ' <%(?'■*' q XoaToC^

UTION NOlinillSNI ^NVINOSHIIWS^S 3 IdVdail^LIBRARI E S^ SMITHSON I AN-* INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI “nVINOSHIIWS 2S 3 I d Vd
2 , 2 r* 2 r~ 2 r~ , 2

cd m 2 co ~ /£Si&\ ro v% -

>W' | **' ~ ^$$0/ w vw ^

**— ^ 21 /n 2.

/dan LIBRARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI NVIN0SH1IWS S3ldVd3n LIBRARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUT

2 , CO _ 2 . CO 2 CO 2 , CO _ 2

&V-- X Xlf 2 WfAk&eJ ^ O

5 " ^ ^ p * ^ ^ 2 5

UTION 00 NOlinillSNI _ NVIN0SH1IIAIS°°S3 I d V d B ll^L I B R A R I ES^SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION °° NOlinillSNI _ NVIN0SH1I WS°° S 3 I dVd

CO -y> \ co _ — co ~ CO -* > CO

— 2T>g>o>

Wte § /C SP ,

S lOl 1

/ f— \'^rAkM^ty Z .

~ >•

/dan LIBRARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI NVIN0SH1IWS S3ldVd3ll LIBRARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUT
z r- _ _ z r- 2 r- 2

m x* dc-^ r; m

co £ co i: co \ £ co — co

rUTION NOlinillSNI NVIN0SH1IIAIS S3ldVdai1 LIBRARIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI NVIN0SH1IIAIS S3ldVd
co z _ ^ w 2 »..• ^ z co 2 ^ ^

VV i 5 w i ■ X E | ' X I 'W i 5 ^

CO 2 CO * 2 co *■• Z CO

j555T^i'RIES SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NOlinillSNI NVIN0SH1IWS S3 I d Vd 3 I1_ LI B RAR I ES SMITHSONIAN _ INSTITUT

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Texts

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "Crossroads of continents : cultures of Siberia and Alaska"

See other formats